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L I B K II T Y AND UNION! 



SPEECHES 



I»EL1VERED AT THE 



EIGHTEENTH AV A R D 



REPUBLICAN FESTIVAL, 



IN COMMEMORATION OF THE BIRTH OF 



WASHINGTON 



HELD AT THE GRAMERCY PARK HOUSE, 



NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22, 1800. 



Reported Phonogkaphicallt by .V^Tilmam Anderson. 



NEW YORK: 
BAKER ct f; O I) W 1 \ . PRINT E R S 

PRWriNG-IlOUSK SQDARE, OPPOSITE CITY HALL, 
1860. 



SPEECHES 



DELIVEKED AT THE 






EIGHTEENTH WARD 

REPUBLICAIi FESTIYAL, 

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE BIRTH OF 

WA S H I :N^ G T Is^, 

ih:ld at the gra:meecy park house, 

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 22, 1S60. 



% 



Heposted Phonooraphicallt by V/illiam Anderson. 



NEW YORK: 
• 4 BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 

PEINTING-HOITSE SQUARE, OPrOSITE CITY HAI-T,. 

1860. 



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^ PROCEEDINGS. 



The EiGHTERNxn "Ward Republican Association commemorated the 
birtli of Washington by a public festival at the Gramercy Park House, on 
Wednesday evening, February 22d, 1860. At 8 o'clock, the members of the 
Association and the invited guests proceeded to the dining saloon, where a 
sumptuous repast -was provided. Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., Chairman of the 
Committee of Arrangements, presided, while Job L. Black, Esq., President 
of the Association, and Wm. K. Strong, Esq., occupied seats at the head of the 
tables on either side of the President, supported at the opposite ends by Messrs. 
James M. Cross, Jas. M. Thomson, and J. Austin Stevens, Jr. Rev, Dr. 
Bellows, in a very appropriate prayer, invoked the Divine blessing upon the 
assemblage and upon the cause of liberty ; after which, the company partook 
of the bountiful provision that had been made for the gratification of their 
alimentive desires. Having spent an agreeable hour in discoursing the bill of 
fare, the cloth was removed and the intellectual programme was presented by — 

The President, who, in announcing the regular toasts, addressed the com- 
pany as follows : 

SPEECH OF ELLIOT C. COWDIN, Esq. 

Fellow Republicans: — In assuming the duties of tlie post which the un- 
merited partiality of the Committee of Arrangements has assigned me, I claim 
your generous indulgence. 

While I am not insensible of the honor, I know full well that there are 
many, very many, of my fellow Republicans of the Eighteenth Ward, better 
qualified to discharge the duties of this occasion, but there is no one more ear- 
nestly devoted to the noble cause which has brought us together. (Applause.) 

We are here as neighbors and friends, to interchange friendly and social 
salutations, and to declare anew our unalterable attachment to the principles of 
the Fathers of the Republic. 

We are assembled as Republicans, to rejoice together with exceeding joy, 
that, after a well-fought battle, a signal victory has been won by the Represen- 
tatives of the nation, and that the Banner of the Constitution is again planted 
on the walls of the Capitol. (Loud cheers.) 

We meet to commemorate the birthday of the pure and noble Washington 
— that hero, sage, and patriot, " whom Providence left childless that a nation 
might call him Father." 



Other heroes have won more brilliant battles; but none have closed so glo- 
rious a career. Others have fought to enslave ; he to give freedom. Others 
fousrht for power or a kingdom ; he for Independence, and no other throne than 
tbe'hearts of his countrymen. (Loud applause.) 

Amid the darkness of the Revolution, he exclaimed, "I see my duty, — 
that of standing up for the liberties of my country; I dare not shrink fron:v it; 
and I rely on that Being who has not left to us the choice of duties, that while 
I shall conscientiously discharge mine, I shall not finally lose my reward." 
How nobly were those duties pprformed ! And after a life of unparalleled 
devotion and sacrifice in the public service, what a priceless legacy he has left 
us in his parting counsels ! 

He earnestly charged the people to be united, and to preserve "the unity 
of government which constitutes us one people," as "a main pillar in the edi- 
fice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your 
peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which 
you so highly prize." To discountenance " whatever may suggest even a sus- 
picion that the Union can in any event be abandoned ;" to " observe good faith 
and justice towards all nations ; cultivate peace and harmony with all ;" to dis- 
claim, "as matter of serious concern," all "geographical discriminations." 

He declared that " the Constitution, which at any time exists, till changed 
by the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all," and that " all obstructions 
to the execution of the laws * * * are destructive to this fundamental 
principle, and of fatal tendency," 

As for slavery, none deplored it more than Washington. (Cheers.) He 
proclaimed that it was among his " first wishes to see some plan adopted by 
which slavery in this country may be abolished by law." But the idea of 
extending it — of dincriminatinci in favor of that one particular gcogrm2)hical 
and sectional interest, was never for a moment entertained ; he stood where all 
the statesmen and patriots of the Kevolution stood, uncompromisingly on the 
side of freedom. 

Gentlemen, on this day, at least, it is well to pause and reflect on his words 
of wdsdom and candor. . Let them be engraven on our memories. Let them 
Avarm our hearts, excite our patriotism, and strengthen our hopes for the 
great Battle of Liberty and Union that is before us. (Prolonged cheering.) 
Be of o'ood cheer. A voice of encouragement comes to us from the plains of 
Kansas, exclaiming in trumpet tones : 

"Easier were it 
To hurl the rooted mountain from its base. 
Than force the yoke of slavery uj^ou men 
Determiued to be free." 

(Renewed applause.) 

Fellow Republicans, our duties are plain ; let us meet them like men. 
There can be no doubt that the great majority of the people are opposed, 
utterly and irreconcilably opposed, to slave aggression. Let us, then, unite in a 
spirit of justice and fraternity, and put an end to oppression and misrule, 

" The time was," said Lord Chatham in the British Parliament, " when 
I was content to see France brought to her knees ; now I wish to see her laid 
on her back." Can we say less of the minions of Slaveocracy ? Already we 
have brought them to their knees, by the choice of a Republican Speaker 
(Loud cheers) ; and by the blessing of God, in November next, we will lay 



them on tlieir backs, by tbe triumpliant election of a Republican President. 
(Enthusiastic cheering.) 

To effect this, let Union, Union, Union, be our watch-word. A union 
among Republicans, and a union with all who are opposed to Federal corrup- 
t'on and misgovernraent ; opposed to forcing slavery upon the national Terri- 
tories to the exclusion of the laboring white man ; opposed to robbing weak 
and defenseless neighboring nations of their territories, over which to spread 
the blight of human slavery ; opposed to latter-day iJemocracy out-and-out, 
in all its forms. (Loud cheers.) 

With such men, I say, let us unite, in a spirit of just conciliation, with 
" principles — not men " for our guide, and the good of our common country 
our sole aim. 

The wild fire of fanaticism on the one hand, and violence, menace, and 
di>union on the other, are but as passing clouds in the serene and everlasting 
heavens. Be not dismayed. Planting ourselves firmly on the Constitution 
and the Laws of the land, Avith the light of the principles of the Declaration of 
Independence to illumine our path, and the example of tlie fathers of the Re- 
public to direct our steps, let us go forth without fear, and with manly hearts. 

" Let our noble motto be, 
God — the Country — Liberty ; 
Planted on religion's rock, 
Thou shalt stand in every shock. 
Laugh at danger far and near, 
Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear ; 
Still with persevering might, 
Speak the truth, and do the right." 

The President resumed his seat amid great applause. 

The first regular toast — 

" Our Country, Our Whole Country, and nothing hut our Country,''^ 
was drunk with a hearty good-will, Dodworth's band playing " Yaidcee Doodle.'" 

The chairman said, the second regular toast was one which appealed to 
their patriotic feelings, and he trusted it would be received with all the honors. 
" The President of (he United States^ 

Music, — "The Star Spangled Banner." 

The President said he held in his hand a letter from the third highest 
officer in the United States, our Rejnihlican Speaker of the House of Represen- 
tatives ; which was the signal for loud and long-continued cheering. 

He read the subjoined letter. 

LETTER FROM SPEAKER PENNINGTON. 

HousK OF Representatives, Washington, 
Feb. 14, 1860. 

Dear Sir: — I received your very kind invitation, as Chairman of your 
Committee, to attend a meeting of the Republicans of the Eighteenth Ward of 
the city of Nev/ York, on the 22d inst. While it would be a source of great 
pleasure could I be with you at that time, you perceive my pressing duties 
here entirely forbid it. 

While I do not think any man is called upon to surrender principle to 



6 

expediency, yet there are occasions, and tLat time is now with us, when all 
sound and patriotic citizens should exercise calmness and moderation, and avoid, 
as far as practicable, every unupcessary excitement. 

The perpetuity of the Union should be inscribed on every banner, and 
never yielded but in the last extremity. For myself, I have no fears, depending 
as I do on that love of country which pervades our people. As our institutions 
were established for us by wise and noble ancestors, it would seem a sad event 
if we could not preserve so valuable an inheritance. Have no fears, our coun- 
try will yet remain one people. 

I beg to ofi'er you my best thanks for your invitation, with the fullowing 
sentiment : 

Our Country and her Free Institutions — May our Union be perpetual t 
Very respectfully. 

Your ob'dient servant, 

WM. PENNINGTOX. 
Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., Chairman, &c., <fec. 

The third regular toast — 

" The Governor of the State of New York" 

was drunk with great enthusiasm, the band playing " Ilail to the Chief." 

The President had the pleasure to inform the company that he had re- 
ceived a letter from his Excellency, the Governor, which he proceeded to r<.-ad : 

LETTER OF GOVERNOR MORGxVK 

State of New York, Executive Department, 
Albany, Feb. 21, 1860. 
Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., Cliairman, ttc. — Dear Sir: It would afford me 
very great plea-uie to unite with the Republicans of the Eighteenth Ward, ia 
the celebration of the anniversary of the birth of AVashington. 

There is everything to encourage us in the political aspect of the country; 
and I fully believe that we can attain, as we shall deserve, success in the ap- 
proaching national contest, by united and consolidated effort. There must be 
union, concession, and labor ; and every gathering like the one proposed will, of 
necessity, promote their attainment. 

My duties here forbid me to be present with you in person, but I send you 
as a sentiment : 

The Hcpnblican Parti/, faithful to its principles, it will fulfill all the guar- 
antees of the Constitution, and will demand that they shall be fulfilled by others. 

I am, with great respect, 

Very trulv yours, 

"e. d. morgan. 

The President in announcing the fourth regular toast, 
" The Birthday of Washington,'' 

said : It happens that we have here to-night, as one of our Vice-presidents 
and a member of the Committee of Arrangements, a son of a Revolutionary 
hero who served under General "Washington in several battles — in those of 
White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, and Brandywine. He was near General 
Lafayette when he shed his first blood in the cause of Independence. He, 



himself, was afterwards wounded at the battle of Germantown ; and tliougli 
sixty-two years an invalid, lived to a good old age. He was ever strong in 
principle ; strong in liis love of country, and strong in Lis attachment to the 
noble cause which we are met here to-night to stand by and to uphold. I have 
the honor to introduce to you the son of that worthy sire, our neighbor and 
friend, Wm. K. Strong, Esq. 

SPEECH OF WILLIAM K. STRONG, ESQ. 

Mr. Strong, on rising to respond, was received with several rounds of 
applause. lie said, — 

Mr. President : At no period since the American Revolution, or at least 
since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, has there been greater necessity 
than now to recur to the principles which governed the founders of the Union 
under which we live. This is, therefore, a most appiopriate gathering of friends 
who respect the political faith of their ancestors, and who are united in the sup- 
port of what they deem to be the essential and unchanged piinciples of their 
fathers, which underlie and overspread the whole structure of our Government. 
What occasion could be more fitting to hallow our remembrance, to av/^iken 
our admiration, and to stir within us grateful emotions, than the anniversary of 
that day which gave to the world and to our country our beloved Washington ? 
History has already treasured for us many noble names, which have rendered 
acknowledged service in the rearing of this American Fiepublic. We will here 
and always render fitting homage to their memory. When we have done this, 
how much is still left, in every heart, of love and veneration, and, upon all lips, 
of praise, honor, and gratitude, for that name and for those deeds which the 
life and virtues of Washington have inscribed upon our annals, where they will 
forever remain, the glowing theme of his countrymen and of the world ! The 
occasion would very properly admit of a much more elaborate reference to the 
great personal qualities, and to the civil and military exploits, which have made 
Washington so renowned in history, and so dear to every American heart; but 
I am restrained from doing so by the brief time allotted me. I will, Mr. Presi- 
dent and gentlemen, with your permission, devote a single thought to a com- 
parison of our position as a political party — to the great doctrines and piinciples 
which Washington avowed and adhered to up to the close of his eventful life. 
We are here assembled to night in the character of Republicans, belonging to a 
large and powerful party, comprising probably at this time a majority of all the 
legal and qualified voters of the nation ; we have united and organized upon a 
platform of principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, and em- 
braced in the cardinal features of our Federal Constitution. Now, if this be so, 
and I do not think it can be successfully disputed by any one, then we are cer- 
tainly standing upon the ground occupied by Washington and his cotcmporaries 
at the formation of the Government, and to which they adhered in the admin- 
istration of its affairs for a long scries of years following the adoption of the 
Constitution. We are here to-night, Mr. President, to assert, in the presence 
of each other, and to fling the assertion broadcast to the world, our devotion to 
those principles of our fathers which ushered this Union into life ; and we are 
here to pledge our undying efforts to its support, maintenance, and perpetuity. 
In that spirit which animated our fathers "to risk all and topeiil all" in the 
establishment of this Union, we are here to say that we will avert, in blood if 
it be necessary, as they would say (if here to vindicate this priceless blessing), 



8 

the first parricidal blow that shall be given for its dismemberment or destruc- 
tion. We are here to say we sympathize in no lawless incursions upon the 
just rights of States, or in any violation of the laws and guaranties by which 
their institutions and sovereignty are upheld and secured. And we are here 
also to utter our outspoken denunciation of that atrocious violation of the pro- 
vision in our Constitution which guarantees " to citizens of each State all the 
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," in the expulsion and 
banishment of citizens without any allegation of crime, unless that be one which 
prefers Freedom to Slavery, and the expression of a desire that all should share 
and enjoy its blessings. We are here furthermore to request of our countrymen 
in the South, to desist from all further threats and combinations which menace 
disunion ; and to say to the men of the North, Do nothing and say nothiog that 
will increase or inflame the discord that is now temporarily with us. The truth 
and the right will prevail ; moderation will soon prove to be the harbinger of 
justice and peace, and all sections and all parties will, with patient and wise 
counsels, soon feel the genial glow of strength in our re-established fellowship. 
Our relations will then be to each other, as those that bound our ancestors in 
a common bond of union ; and the inscription on our country's banner will then 
be, as it floats over land and sea, A Ilappy, Prosperous, Powerful, and United 
People. (Loud applause.) 

The fifth regular toast was — 

" The Constitution of the United States. — Let us never forget that its pur- 
poses, as declared by its framers, were " to form a more perfect union, establish 
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote 
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity." 

The President remarked that no formal introduction was necessary to 
present to the Republicans of the Eighteenth Ward the Hon. Geokge Opdyke. 
This was a signal for a most enthusiastic welcome, the whole company rising 
to greet Mr. Opdyke, who responded as follows : 

SPEECH OF HOX. GEORGE OPDYKE. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

Accept, I pray you, my grateful acknowledgments for this warm and gen- 
erous reception. It "is as unexpected as I feel it to be unmerited. The best 
return I can make you, at present, is a promise that I will not detain you long 
from the richer treat that awaits us in listening to the distinguished gentlemen 
who will follow me. 

But, Mr. President, I fear you have committed an unkindness, if not an 
indiscretion, in awarding this toast to a mere layman, when I see around me so 
many professional gentlemen whose minds are richly stored with legal and con- 
stitutional lore. Nevertheless, since you have so ordered it, I will not hesitate 
to respond, and that most heartily, to the well-chosen sentiment you have just 
announced. 

It is never out of place to recur to first principles ; for they are our surest 
reliance against the misleading tendencies of passion and prejudice. But it 
seems to me peculiarly appropriate, on an occasion like this, when we have met 
as members of a political party to commemorate the birth of Washington, that 
we should bring to vivid remembrance the noble principles and purposes which 
actuated him and his associates in laying the foundations of our government. 
Nor should wo be satisfied in simply holding these principles and purposes in 



grateful remembrance. They are so just and pure, and so admirably designed 
to secure the blessings of well-regulated liberty, that we should cherish them as 
the perfect standard by which to test the soundness of political creeds and party 
purposes of the present day. 

The early statesmen of this country were rarely gifted. Everything they 
did seems to have been prompted by a purity of purpose and an unselfish wisdom, 
in striking contrast with the selfish aims and prejudiced views of many of the 
public men of our own times. We must bear in mind, however, that they were 
surrounded by circumstances the most favorable for developing patriotic and 
statesmanlike qualities. The strong pressure of external danger kept them 
compact and united. Even their least enviable qualities were raised to the dig- 
nity of patriotism, by being directed against the aggressions of an insolent 
foreign enemy ; and the galling tyrauny they had felt led them to exert all their 
higher qualities in devising political institutions that would protect them from 
like evils in the future. Thus favored, and thus incited to eff'ort, we can scarcely 
feel surprised at the purity of their patriotism, or at the unexampled proficiency 
they attained in the science and art of government, — a proficiency which found 
its ultimate expression in that highest achievement of political wisdom, the Con- 
stitution of the United States. (Cheers.) 

That Constitution has made us a prosperous, united, and powerful nation. 
For these auspicious results we are less indebted, I think, to its letter than to 
its spirit. Its provisions are admirable, it is true ; but they are merely designed 
to give form and expression to the noble purposes which actuated its framers. 
These purposes are declared in its Preamble, in the terse and comprehensive 
language of your toast. They represent the principles on which our govern- 
ment is based. They mark out its boundaries, enumerate its objects, and indi- 
cate its duties ; and it is safe to say that human wisdom has never furnished a 
better definition of the true province of government. (Applause.) 

Mr. President, at a time of political excitement like the present, it is well 
that we should ask ourselves and each other whether there is anything in the 
principles and policy of the Republican party that is not in harmony with the 
declared aims of the Constitution. Do we advocate or desire any relaxation of 
the bonds of " union ?" On the contrary, we love and venerate the Union, and 
claim to be its truest friends. We aim to perpetuate it by scrupulously observ- 
ing all the compromises involved in its origin, and by insisting that all others 
shall conform to its spirit, so that it shall be what its authors intended it to be, 
a just, honorable, and intimate union. / believe it is safe to say, that there is not 
one true Republican that favors disunion. That sentiment, so far as it exists 
at all, is chiefly monopolized by the Southern portion of our pohtical oppo- 
nents. 

Are we opposed to "justice?" Do we aim to deprive any section or indi- 
vidual of natural or acquired rights ? We are sometimes charged with this, but 
the charge is utterly groundless. On the contrary, while we maintain all rights 
that emanate from principles of natural justice, we support with equal 'firmness 
all rights that the Constitution has established. Circumstances compelled the 
framers of that instrument to compromise with one grievous wrong, by recog- 
nizing the right of slavery in the States where it then existed. That compro- 
mise we stand by; and although we deeply lament its necessity, as did all the 
early statesmen, we shall never falter iu its maintenance. (Renewed ap- 
plause.) 

We are steadfast friends of " domestic tranquillity," and hold ourselves in 
readiness at all times to support the government in suppressing insurrection. No 



10 

matter whether the insurrection appears in the form of a madman with a few 
misguided followers, as at Harper's Ferrj' ; or that of a sister State attempting to 
rise above the Constitution and laws of the United States, as in the case of South 
Carolina on the tariff question ; or in the more portentous aspect of the secession 
of a platoon of States, as is now threatened in a certain contingency by impe- 
rious Southern politicians, — we are, in any and every case, its stern and uncom- 
promising foe. No matter in what quarter the defection or danger may appear, 
we shall zealously aid in its suppression ; for we are resolved, at all hazards, that 
the supremacy of government and the unity of tlie nation shall be maintained. 
And this proves that we are also in favor of " providing for the common defense ;" 
for it is only from an internal source that any future danger is to be appre- 
hended. 

And, finally, we aim "to promote the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," by arresting the spread of slavery, 
by upholling the Constitution in all its parts, and by striving to emulate the 
spirit of justice and benevolence which animated its framers. 

The first and highest aim of the Republican party is to subordinate slavery 
to freedom by confining it within its present limits. We regard slavery as sec- 
tional and fi-ec'dom national — slavery the accident, freedom the ruling principle 
of our government. We believe with Washington and Jefi'erson and all their 
contemporaries, that the institution of slavery is a wrong and an outrage on the 
enslaved, and a terrible misfortune to the slaveholder. Thus believing, we desire 
to preserve the Territories of the Union from its blighting presence, and to hand 
them down to posterity as a rich inheritance for the untold millions of freemen 
who will hereafter occupy them. It was chiefly for this end that the Republican 
party was oi-ganized ; and for this end it will, I trust, unfalteringly labor until its 
beneficent purpose is securely attained. 

And now, Mr. President, permit me, before taking my seat, to briefly 
review the policy and aims of our political opponents. Their purposes appear 
to me very unlike those enunciated in the preamble of the Constitution. The 
Democratic party, it is true, professes great reverence for the Constitution ; but 
it is prone to manifest its regard by ingenious attempts to pervert the meaning 
of some of its provisions, and by an open repudiation of that spirit of freedom 
which so pervaded the minds and hearts of its framers that they would not tol- 
erate the word slave on its sacred pages. 

It is no injustice to say that one of the leading purposes of the Democratic 
party, as now constituted, is to render slavery paramount to freedom. It is 
under the contiol and direction of Southern leaders. These leaders are intensely 
sectional. Their political vision seems incapable of taking in any other interest 
than that of slavery. They can see scarce anything in the Constitution but 
imaginary prerogatives of that institution. In truth, they seem to regard that 
instrument as a contrivance for extending slavery and crushing out freedom. 
To justify these views, they have found it necessary, of late, to assume a new 
and most off'ensive position. They now shamelessly declare, that freedom is the 
abnormal condition of society, and that slavery is just, wise and beneficent. And 
they further declare, that they will at once dissolve the Union if the people 
elect a President entertaining dift'erent views. In other words, " rule or ruin " 
is now their motto. 

These ofi'ensive sentiments and sectional aims, so diflerent from those of the 
Constitution, are openly avowed by the Southern leaders of the Democratic 
party; and I regret to say, that they are at least tacitly acquiesced in by the 
great mass of that party even at the North, They se m to have lost sight of 



11 

the true purposes of our government, and to liave blindly enlisted under slave- 
bolding leaders, who are waging a relentless warfare against the spirit of our 
free institutions. These leaders are impelled less by their regard for the mate- 
rial interests of their section than by their love of power and place. They seem 
determined that 350,000 slaveholders shall continue in the future as in the past 
to control the destinies of this government, and take the lion's share of its honors 
and emoluments. Be ours the duty of rebuking the insolence of their demands 
by disappointing their hopes. Let us wrest the government from the hands of 
the minority who have usurped and misdirected it, and place it in the hands of the 
majority, where it rightfully belongs. This is the true mission of the Republican 
party. In its accomplishment we may safely count on the co-operation of a 
large share of the Northern Democrats; for it cannot be that honest and intel- 
ligent men will prove faithless to their own manhood and to the interests of 
freedom. Let us, then, be of good cheer. Our cause is just, and with proper 
efforts we can scarcely fail of early success. (Loud applause.) 

The President announced the sixth regular toast — 

" Waskiny toil's Example. — His life was devoted to three great objects, the 
Independence of his Country, its Union, and its Freedom. Whoever thinks 
only of the first and second, forgetting the last, overlooks the completeness of 
his character," — 

and called upon Wm. M, Evarts, Esq., to respond. 

Mr. Evarts, on rising, was greeted with vociferous cheering, the whole 
company rising and giving expression to their appreciation of the gifted cham- 
pion of freedom, in demonstrations of applause which must have been exceed- 
ingly gratifying to the eloquent orator. "When silence was restored, Mr. 
Evarts addressed his hearers thus : 

SPEECH OF WILLIAM M. EVARTS, Esq. 
Mr. President : 

I feel greatly honored by the invitation of your Committee to take some 
part in this festival of friends and neighbors, associated in the same sentiments 
regarding the safety, the honor, and the glory of our country, to celebrate as 
befits all its citizens, the great day which in the birth of Washington gave so 
large promise for the future of this nation and for the hopes of the world — a 
promise not too large for the achievements of his life and the influence of his 
character to redeem. (Applause.) 

Mr. President, your sentiment has truly stated the great objects, the great 
purposes, the great achievements of the life of W^ashingtou. The freedom of 
his country, its independence, its union, were the purposes of his life ; and by 
bis life and its actions he accomplished them all. And you are right, Sir, in 
saying, and saying fitly to the political temper of these times, that he who looks 
at his example or at the great acts of the American Revolution as being con- 
cerned wholly or mainly with the establishment of our National Independence 
and of the Federal Union, as objects distinguished from, or superior to, the 
liberty of the people and of the nation, greatly errs. 

Why, Sir, so far from this being the last, it was the first in the thought, 
first in the plan, and first in the action of Washington and of his contem- 
poraries. 

It was a struggle for liberty against oppression before the ideas of Inde- 



12 

pendence or of Union bad developed themselves. Why, Sir, after the battle of 
Bunkers Hill, in '75, when Washington passed through the city of New York, 
on his way to take command of the forces at Cambridge, he was addressed by 
the Provincial Congress of New York. When they expressed their full assur- 
ance to him that " after success in the glorious struggle for American liberty," 
— to result in an accommodation with the mother country — he would lay down 
the important military trust committed to him and rcassurae the character of a 
citizen, Washington replied to them for himself and the officers who stood 
around him : "We shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour, 
when the establishment of American liberty, on the most firm and solid founda- 
tions, shall enable us to return to our private stations in the bosom of a free, 
peaceful, and happy country." This, Sir, was a year before the Declaration of 
Independence ; Washington was animated, as the whole country was inflamed, 
by the sacred fire of liberty, for the men, the w^omen, and the children that 
occupied the territories. This was, then, the heroic position of Washington. 
And, for myself I love to contemplate his attitude in the maturity of manhood, 
a British subject, but fighting for liberty, as a rebel, not against the Constitution 
of Great Britain, but against the tyrauny of its King and Parliament, (Ap- 
plause.) 

Look at him as he stood av'owing these sentiments, concealing nothing, 
with no equivocation. " Peace, peace, I hope. Gentlemen, with you, shall 
come, tut only when the establishment of American liberty on the firmest and 
most solid foundations shall enable us to return to our private stations in a free 
country." (Renewed applause.) 

How noble, as he uttered these words, does he rise before us, in mien and 
in feature ! With how brave a heart, and with what power in arms, did he 
adhere to that purpose. 

As the opening contest showed larger and larger dimensions to the ques- 
tion of freedom, — involving independence of Crown and Parliament to escape 
their tp-anuy — as a part of the energetic efi"ort for liberty, and subordinate 
always to that, he counseled and fought for the Independence of the country. 
And when, the Independence of the country gained, its preservation, its main- 
tenance, still always for the surer protection of liberty, demanded a nearer and 
clearer union of interest and of government, he, as the President of the Con- 
vention of 1787, completing its labors in the Constitution of 1789, consum- 
mated the last act in the same great drama of American Liberty, thus "estab- 
lished upon the most firm and solid foundations" of National Independence and 
Constitutional Union. (Applause.) 

Now, to Washington, to Jefferson, to the Congress of '76, and to the sol- 
diers of the Revolution, Independence was but one, and Union was but another, 
of the firm and solid foundations of American Liberty ; and except as the 
foundations of Liberty, they were nothing. (Cheers.) 

Mr. President, I wnll not recite the familiar story of the public life of 
Washington. As it begun s'o it endured to its end, faithful and true to the 
love of liberty. 

As he approached the close of his public career, by the completion of his 
second presidential term, he warned his countrymen of the dangers that beset 
their liberty, in the celebrated Farewell Address — quoted, now by the party 
that follows the single* idea of Americanism, in those parts of it which relate 
to foreign and entangling alliances, and now by another party that would 
smother under the great sentiment of Union the still more sacred sentiment of 
Liberty. (Loud cheers.) 



13 

What is liis Farewell Address? \Yhat is its object and its purpose ? and 
■what stands in the fore front of it ? It is the earnest hope ''that the happiness 
of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberti/, may be made com- 
plete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as 
may acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the 
affection, and the adopdon of every nation which is yet a stranger to it." 
(Great applause.) And when he approaches that portion of his Address in 
which he expresses his farewell solicitudes and gives his farewell counsels, he 
speaks first of the love of liberty, saying: "Interwoven as is the love of 
liberty with every ligament of our hearts, no recommendation of mine is ne- 
cessary to fortify or confirm the attachment ;" and then he proceeds to enforce 
the prime necessity of maintaining the Independence of tbe nation, then feeble 
and youthful, against fureign interfeience, as the first and most dangerous ave- 
nue to the overthrow of its liberty ; and then, he warns against all that shall 
tend to distract or weaken the Union of the States, as the next formidable foe- 
to the preservation of our liberty. 

If the temple be thus sacred and deserving of every pious care, that its 
foundations should be kept secure, let us never forget that the deity that in- 
habits it is greater than the temple. (Loud cheering.) 

Mr. President, the last month of the expiring century put out the light of 
that life which, with steady and ever-growing luster, and more than any other 
human life that ever shone among men, shed a benign influence upon the 
fortunes of his country, and upon the hopes of his race. The seal of death 
stamped his life as fortunate, and consecrated in the hearts of his countrymen 
a shrine that never shall be deserted. (Applause.) 

Mr. President, — Sixty years have passed, the period of two generations has 
passed, and we to-day, amid the responsibilities of active life, are to look upon 
our country, its liberties, its independence, and its union, and see what are the 
issues in controversy for our time and for our action. Suitable as were the 
counsels of Washington, as to the dangers which might threaten our national 
independence in the feebleness of our youth, who shall say that noio it is an 
impoitant practical lesson or duty of ours to be solicitous about any assault 
upon our independence from abroad ? Why, Sir — until, within the last few 
months, we heard a base suggestion from Virginia that the horsemen of a for- 
eign emperor should trample our sacred soil, and his fleet vex with their keels 
the free waters of our coast — no voice has dare to question our absolute safety 
against foreign power. Until from some more potential voice than that fool- 
ish Virginian's we have an intimation or a threat of foreign invasion, we need 
not fear danger to our national independence from any foreign source. 

And then. Sir, as to the Union : two generations of men have grown up to 
know and to feel, — shall I say the advantages of the Union ? No ! it is putting 
it upon too low considerations to speak of the advantages of the Union ; two 
generations of men have grown up to know and to love their country, and that 
country is the Union. Are we, for the first instance in the world's history, a 
people who rest their love of country and their jealousy for its integrity, upon a 
calculation of its advantages / ^^hy, one might as well put his affection for his 
mother upon a question of gain, as to talk of his love of country being limited 
and regulated by a calculation of its advantages. (Loud applause.) No ! Gen- 
tlemen, the Union is our country ; we have no other. What is smoothly called 
a '' dissolution of the Union," is the dismemberment of our country. AVhen dis- 
membered, it is no longer the country of our love — but, bereaved and exiled, we 
are to find or make, as best we may, a new home for our affections. 



14 

But, Gentlemen, -wliile tliis sentiment of patriotism of a proud and powerful 
people thus guaranties the preservation of our country in its complete integrity, 
and while great lakes and rivers, and the intercourse of society, and the railroads 
and the telegraphs, make it quite impossible, — if we were so poor-spirited a race 
of men as to calculate nothing but the advantage of preserving the integrity of 
our country, — quite impossible, I repeat, to dismember it, let me say to you that 
neither the power that makes us secure in our independence among the nations 
of the world, nor those causes which make sure as the ground on which we 
stand, and perpetual as the sky over our heads, the preservation of the Union, 
that none of these immense guaranties of independence and of union are, alas ! 
in their nature or of necessity, guaranties of our liberty. Great nations have 
not always been free ; none ever has been free till ours. Here, then, is the 
point of danger and responsibility, and here come in the duty, the solicitude, the 
interest, the vows of the Republican party. Their independence being safe, and 
their Union being safe, the liberties of these United States must and shall be 
preserved. (Enthusiastic applause.) 

Mr. President, — What is the Republican party, and what the public service 
it purposes ? 

Its purpose is to restore the liberties of the country threatened by the policy 
and purposes of the Slave Power, as carried out through the action of the 
General Government as administered by the Democratic party. That is the 
impending danger against which the Republican party has rallied ; and as dis- 
tinctly, let me say, Sir, under the name of Washington, as the nation ever rallied 
under that name in the war of independence. (Cheers.) It is a mistake to 
suppose, — and all the people that so flippantly make the charge do not sup- 
pose so, — but it is a mistake to suppose, that the Republican Party, primarily or 
at all, is concerned with the civil condition of the black race within the States 
of the Union. We know our duties as men, and we know our duties as citizens. 
The Republican party is a political organization, distinctly and boldly assuming 
all political duties, but distinctly and honestly abstaining from all duties, in 
connection with this question of slavery, that are not political and are not con- 
stitutional. (Great cheering.) Now, how is it that the threat to the liberties 
of this country has arisen ? How is it that danger to our liberties may be ex- 
pected and feared from the institution of slavery ? Is it that our material 
strength or prosperity shall be impeded or overthrown by the presence of four 
millions of slaves in our population, already numbering twenty -six millions of 
free white people ? No ! But, Gentlemen, it is that the essential idea on which 
that institution rests, is force, is power against right and against liberty ; and 
when great political communities, as the States of this country in which that 
institution exists and is cherished, have, as tlie foundation of their social struc- 
ture, this principle of force and power, against right and against liberty, why, 
the maintenance and confirmation of that institution, cherish and expand the 
idea of power and force against right and against liberty ; at length, the im- 
mense social interest that rests upon this basis, of necessity urges and compels 
a wider and wider subjection of right and liberty to force and power. It 
is this that has required, and has eflfected the social subordination of the non- 
slavehoUling white population of the slave States ; that, has, finally, insisted 
upon the complete suppression of liberty of speech, libeity of the press, liberty 
of reliiTion, liberty of travel, and, in tine, of common American liberty^ over one 
third of this nation. (Great applause.) And when this original force is aided 
by this immense acquisition, it will extend, and, unchecked, will accomplish what 
it now distinctly attempts, the moral subjugation of the free States of this coun- 



IS 

try, in order that the social institution of actual slavery may be secure. Thus, 
step by step, grows the colossal power of slavery, which, already, so bestrides 
this whole land, that we, the freemen of the free States, can only " peep about to 
find ourselves dishonorable graves," or manfully meet the controversy with the 
weapons that belong to it, and resolve, like Washington, that " not until Amer- 
ican liberty shall be re-estdblishcd on the most firm and solid foundations, will 
■we return to our private stations, a free, a peaceful, and a happy people." (Pro- 
tracted cheering.) 

And now. Gentlemen, the example of Washington is not merely a subject of 
commemorative reverence — it is a bright and living spirit that should be ac- 
cepted and adopted as the guide and leader of our action in the warfare of poli- 
tics, which belongs to a free people whenever public affiiirs require redress. The 
sentiment of the country has, by recent occurrences, manifested itself in the most 
laudable manner. The women of America have visited the sepulchre of Wash- 
ington, and have rescued it from the neglectful hands of his kindred, and from 
the careless keeping of that State of which, alas, so much of the greatness lies 
buried in his grave. This is well. But the spirit of AVashington appeals to the 
manhood of the country, wherever it can be found, to rescue the great monument 
reared to his fame in the peace, prosperity, dignity, power, and liberty of the 
American people from the disgraces and the dangers that the neglectful hands 
and the careless keeping of that portion of this nation which claims him as near- 
est to them, have involved them and us in. The manhood of the nation is not 
all found in the Republican party, but all that there is in the Republican party 
is manful and brave ; and if it retains its manhood and its valor, it will soon 
embrace within its numbers and its strength all the manhood and the valor of the 
American people. If it will follow its principles, follow its leaders, abide their 
fortunes, and consider nothing gained in political success in which a true leader 
of the forlorn hope does not him-elf plant the true standard of the Republican 
party upon whatever height we may gain, our cause, our triumph, our glory is 
secure ; but if we fall short and waver, the liberties of the country will need 
other aid and other defenders, and will find them. 

Now, Mr. President and Gentlemen, I have but glanced at the topics which 
your toast suggests, and yet I have detained you longer than I intended, and 
longer than I should have done. I will close with asking you to do honor to 
this sentiment : — 

The Republican Party : The example of Washington is its impulse and 
its guide to whatever labors and sacrifices may be necessary, to bring back the 
administration of the Government to the love and the defense of Liberty. 

The sentiment was received with great enthusiasm ; and Mr. Evarts was 
loudly cheered on resuming his seat. 

The President announced the Seventh regular Toast, — 

" The Union of the States,'^ 

and called upon E. Delafield Smith, Esq., who was received with loud cheers. 
After the band had performed " The Star Spangled Banner," Mr. James M. 
Thomson proposed three cheers for E. Delafield Smith — " a Smith who would 
weld the Union so strongly together, that it would be impossible for the dis- 
unionists to sever it." (Laughter and cheers.) 



16 



SPEECH OF E. DELAFIELD SMITH, Esq. 
Mr. President and Fellow Republicans : 

My acknowledgments are due to your Committee of Arrangements for the 
position assigned me in these festivities. I am honored in rising amidst the 
distinguished gentlemen who immediately surround me, and honored yet more 
by the honest acclaims with which the working Republicans here assembled 
have greeted me, under the lead of one of the most trusted and laborious of 
their number. I am honored still further, by following in speech, as I would 
in effort and aspiration, the eminent advocate whose eloquent and cogent ad- 
dress was just concluded. (Applause.) 

In responding to the patriotic sentiment — " The Union of the States," — I am 
reminded, Gentlemen, of the incident in Shakspeare's play of Much Ado about 
JVothijiff, when that model officer, Dogberry, arrested a culprit of high degree, 
charged, among other things, with having borrowed money in the name of God 
to such an extent and so dishonestly, that no one in all Messina would longer 
give any faith or credit when the words " for God's sake" were used. 
Thus, the Democratic party has so often, " for the sake of the Union," obtained 
from the North a confidence which it betrays, that I fear some Dogberry in our 
metropolitan police may arrest me for a false pretense, or a meditated imposi- 
tion, when I attempt to gain credit and applause in the sacred name of the 
Union. (Laughter.) My defense shall be, that I speak not, like a professional 
" Union-saver," for Slavery and the Union, but, like a true son of Washington, 
for Liberty and the Union. (Cheers.) 

While the halls of our national Congress are ringing with the disunion cry 
of the Southern Democrac}', amidst the craven silence and occasional concur- 
rence of their Northern colleagues, it is a part of Democratic tactics, in their 
war upon Republicanism, to work, not alone upon the timidity of trade, but 
also i;pon the apprehensions of patriotism. Devotion to the diffusion of liberty 
and efforts to " restore the government to the principles of Washington," are 
rebuked as disloyal. Slavery advances in the livery of patriotism, and he who 
raises his voice against her desolating progress must wear any brand which her 
dark finger chooses to mark upon his brow. Thus the glorious old steed of the 
Union is disengaged from the car of Freedom, and linked to the dragging wheels 
of Slavery, as if the horses of Phoebus were cut from the chariot of the morn- 
ing, and haraessed to a dirt-cart ! The charge of disunionism is a powerful 
weapon — less so since the recent exposure of our opponents in Congress — but 
still effective. It should be met with a bold denial, and with diligent efforts to 
disabuse the public mind. It is a pernicious aspersion. It seeks to produce 
an unnatural severance between sentiments which the Revolutionary period uni- 
ted. It is a crime, not alone against Liberty, but against the Union itself, be- 
cause it tends to impair, among the most reliable of our citizens, that sentiment 
of Union which should co-exist with devotion to Liberty. (Cheers.) 

In seeking to oppose effectually the consciences of the nation to both dis- 
union and slavery, we encounter two classes of extremists, possessing points of 
mutual resemblance, and emulating each other in hostility to the Republican 
organization. One of these classes — comprising the ultra, non-voting abolition- 
ists — finds a scanty sustenance here in the North. It proclaims that the Bible 
and the Constitution are each pro-slavery. It opposes both. It is ready to 
impart to us a share of the public odium which rashness and violence excite, 
and then withholds all aid and recompense at the ballot-box. It is a stranger 
to the wisdom of moderation, and wars upon hopeful, practical effort. (Cries 



of s^ood, cood.) The other class of clisuiiionists belongs to the South. While a 
certain fanaticism for the right, uiay plead for a mild judgment upon the one, 
the other, Avith its black creed, is beyond apology. This class, hke the first, 
sees the seal of Slavery upon every page of both the Constitution and the Bible. 
Each is insane and headlong in its course, and destined, I trust, to its own de- 
struction. In one respect, however, all parallel ceases. One class is -weak, the 
other is strong ; one few in number, the other a host. Here the difference is 
palpable and important. The band of Northern disunionists are without a 
constituency, and impotent except for occasional and fitful evil. Southern dis- 
unionists, on the other hand, have a constituency in half the Gulf States, in Ar- 
kansas and in South Carolina. They constitute the staple of the Democratic 
party ; they control and shape its policy ; they send to Congress a controlling 
majority of its representatives. Its whole position and character, its eftbrts 
and its destinies, are held and moulded by the dark power of slavery and dis- 
union. Under this shadow, the once proud Democracy wears the badge of 
servility at the South, and of hypocrisy at the North. To both bands of dis- 
unionists, the Republican party is opposed in principle and purpose. It main- 
tains that the Bible is a freedom-breathing book. (Applause.) It contends that 
the Constitution is a freedom-disseminating instrument. (Renewed applause.) 
Upon each it swears forever to defend the Union and the Right. (Cheers.) 

Yet the Republican party is accused of disunion tendencies, because it fol- 
lows the fiith of our Republican fathers, and struggles against the expansion of 
an impoverishing and demoralizing system of labor. It is not denied that our 
principles are sustained by a majority of our countr}-men in the East, the North 
and the West. 'Jhey are opposed with unanimity, only in the South. To test 
the charge, let us suppose that a pol tical party should arise and unite all the 
states in one section of the confedeiacy in favor of so altering the national Constitu- 
tion as to permit state governments to depart fiom the Republican form and in- 
troduce limited monarchies. "Would it be sectional or unpatriotic for the other 
portions of the country to unite against such a party ? That Slavery is a sys- 
tem that should be limited and discouraged, is proved by its practical opera- 
tion. On the one hand, its eflfects upon the mass of Avhite men in the South, 
can be realized alone by those who have seen what are theie called "the poor 
Bockra," scattered through the agricultural districts. Once meeting with a 
railroad det-ntion in North Carolina, far from any village, the cars were sur- 
rounded by a motley number of snuff-dipping negroes (most unfavorably con- 
trasting with those seen about the domestic hearths), and by a Tiingling crowd 
of miserable whites. If you could have looked into the pale and sickly faces 
and gazed upon the feeble forms of those white men, you would have declared 
that they had been subjected to the most devastating disease to which humanity 
is liable. In answer to mv wondeiing inquirv, an intelligent Southern gentle- 
man reinarked, that in many districts, the poor white population was so poorly 
clothed, housed, and fed. and so destitute of animal fbe'd, that they had n t the 
average of human health or strength. The wealthy planter may enjoy his 
northern jaunt and his home of idle plenty, while men like these, with only 
snatches of reputable employment, dishone^tly barter with his negroes, and 
sink to the degradation of voting with him to p' rpetuate their own debasement. 
WTiat a contrast with the moral elevation and muscular energy of the nortliern 
laborer ! Labor is the foundation of wealth, and nourishes the root of a nation's 
prosperity. Let it not be degraded ! (Applause.) 

On the other hand, the inhumanity of Slavery makes resistance to its ag- 
2 



18 

gressions the most sacred duty. It is unjust and iniquitous — at enmity with 
every sentiment of righteousness and generosity in the human heart. There 
are those who have seen a woman of twenty years, with a child by her side 
(both whiter than many who would scorn the imputation of negro blood,) placed 
for sale upon the court-house steps of a Southern village. There are those who 
have beheld the mother and daughter knocked off by the auctioneer — the woman 
to one trader ; the child to another. That tender, womanly form falls into the arms 
of the rough auctioneer ; the contract is broken — the chattel is not delivered — 
the mother is dragged to a retreat, to linger insensible, and at last to die. 

These instance-, indeed, are exceptional and occasional. Admit that they 
are rare. They are sometimes witnessed, and they are sustained by law. How 
many droves of fat, sleek negroes can efface such a stigma from the system ? Are 
its revolting features ever softened when it extends to new domains ? Are we not 
bound by every obligation — as we ourselves may one day be in extremity and 
require help in need — not, indeed, to enter upon any unconstitutional, futile, or 
absurd interference with Slavery where it now exists beyond our jurisdiction, 
but to wage an uncompromising warfare upon the organization of a system like 
this in territories now uncursed by so cold a despotism ? (Cheers.) 

Obeying the noblest instincts of humanity, and the highest appeals of patri- 
otism, the Kepublican party is marching on to a full possession of the govern- 
ment at Washington. (Applause.) We mean to change the whole moral as- 
pect of the nation in the eyes of its own people and the world. Slavery shall 
cease to be lauded in the high places of the land. It shall no longer be the 
passport to office or civility at our national capito!. Our embassadors, unlike a 
recent American minister to Brazil, shall boast of our freedom and be silent of 
our slavery. Corruption shall be rebuked at home, and our country bear abroad 
a noble example to the nations of the eaith. (Loud Cheers) 

" What are monuments of bravery. 

Where no public virtues bloom ? 
What avail in lands of Slavery 

Trophied temple, arch, and tomb ?— 
Pageants ! — Let the world revere us ^ 

For our peoples' rights and laws, 
And the breasts of civic heroes 

Bared in Freedom's holy cause !" 

We mean to open to free labor the vast expanse of our western territory, 
whose extent cannot be conceived without a careful calculation ; we mean to con- 
secrate to free institutions embryo states whose very names are now strange to us. 
Our cities shall be drained of their surplus popuhition — emigration be invited west- 
ward — and opportunity to labor be given to free white men, wherever may have 
been their residence or origin. To these aims, we add the determination to re- 
form our public-land system — make it tributary to the interests, not of specula- 
tors but of the people — and secure to the honest actual settler a free and invio- 
lable homestead, (llenewed cheers.) 

In reply to those who allege that our advance to the power which sooner or 
later awaits us, will be followed by commotion and disunion, we point to the his- 
tory of the last few years. The threats which failed to intimidate our friends 
while nobly supporting Mr. Banks for the Speakership of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, were hushed upon his election. In the midst of a profound calm, he 
was conducted to the chair by a South Carolinian. And at a recent period, we 
have seen at Washington, how Ke] ublican power, when once achieved, subdues 



19 

the waves of faction. I have heard it related of a band of insurgents, that when 
a regiment of troops apjiroachcd in the name of public order, the insurrection 
was only heightened and its tumult augmented, because the muskets were be- 
lieved to contain blank cartridges. In a moment, a mutter of thunder is heard 
from the sky, followed by a terrific peal. The rabble sink down in silence and 
awe ! Thus the advance of the Republican party, preparatory to its final tri- 
umph, may be attended with the irritating clash of arms, and the rebel Demo- 
cracy may continue and increase their disordered cry of disunion; but when the 
thunder of our principles shall be heard from the high places of the land, and we 
shall calmly acquire and firmly maintain the true power which those principles 
shall assure us, ihey will bow to the voice of the right, and thousands shall con- 
fess with shame the part they took in opposition to our peaceful and patriotic 
progress. (Loud and protracted cheers.) 

Our power, once established, will banish the dread of our success, which is 
the secret of the commotions in the discomfited ranks of our opponents. The 
phantom of disunion shall sink, and the shipof state move smoothly, proudly on to 
the accomplishment of noble purposes. Let us, then, rally upon her deck, with the 
flag of Union and Liberty at her mast head, and a tried commander at her helm. 
Let our natural leaders be our real leaders, thus attesting our sincerity and con- 
victing the public judgment that ours is a party not of spoils but of principle; 
a partv intent upon no merely temporary triumph, but determined to achieve a 
glorious and beneficent victory. (Prolonged and enthusiastic cheering.) 

The President announced the eighth regular toast — 

" The Territories of the Union. — As our common property, they should be 
administered by our common Government; as the refuge and support of over- 
flowing populations, they should offer to every man a free home ; as the germs 
of future civihzation and poAver, they should be made free and prosperous 
States." 

Wm. Curtis Notes, Esq., who was called upon to respond, on rising was 
received with loud cheers, evincing a right hearty welcome. 

SPEECH OF WILLIAM CURTIS N0YE3, Esq. 
Mr. President : — 

I shall gratefully remember your kindness, and that of the Republican 
Association of the Eighteenth Ward, in which I happen not to reside, for invit- 
ing me to this ft'stival. This is the first occasion, during the agitations which 
have distracted the country for the last three or four months, when any resj^ect- 
able portion of the Republican Party has been convened for the utterance of its 
sentiments. I regar/.! it, therefore, as peculiarly fortunate that we have here those 
who may, in some sense, speak for the party ; and while it is a very wet night 
without. Sir, and so far as I can discover, a very mellow one within, you seem to 
have given me rather a dry subject — certainly if it is not dry, it is very trite ; 
because for the last six or eight years, indeed for the last ten years almost, 
scarcely any question has been agitated more thoroughly than that connected 
with the organization, government, and the existence of liberty in the Territories 
of the Union. Before I come to that subject, however, and in order that I may 
not be misunderstood, and in order that the party that I in part represent, may 



20 

not be misrepresented, I beg to call your attention to a few general matters. 
You are aware, Sir, that the North is charged — the leaders of the Republican 
party are charged, with fomenting a dissolution of the Union. I repel the 
insinuation or assertion with scorn. ("Good," and applause.) I repel it in be- 
half of the party ; I repel it in my own behalf, as an humble member of the 
party. No falsehood more atrocious has ever been uttered against the Repub- 
lican party. (Applause.) The North, Sir, never has been in favor of disunion 
— never. We have had a most salutary example upon that subject in the 
North. The members of the Hartford Convention, now over forty years ago, 
were suspected, — suspected only, — of disunion designs. They were really not 
guilty of entertaining them ; because they were in the main pure, upright, and 
patriotic men — mistaken it is true, in their views of duty to the country in a 
time of war and disaster; and the very suspicion of a desire for disunion at the 
North, destroyed the political existence of every one of them. (Cheers.) They 
were p -rmitted to go into retirement, as honorable gentlemen, not thereafter to be 
entrusted as loaders of any pai ty. That is the first example. We have had another, 
still more significant. We rebuked disunion at home, or measures which looked 
to disunion, because people faltered in support of the government in the perils of 
war; and because the Hartford Convention had that tendency, it was looked 
upon with disgrace and dishonor. But we have had another rebuke of disunion 
at the South, from the North. 

Thii ty years ago, when the standard of nullification was raised at the South 
— in South Carolina — when it sought assistance from its sister States, — who 
was the foremost in rebuking it? Who was the most eloquent, earnest, and 
devoted advocate that put it down? Who so successfully seconded the exer- 
tions of Anhrew Jackson, and succeeded in destroying and demolishing the 
trea-^onable stracture of nullification which had been raised ? It was the great 
orator and patriot now sleeping in his honored grave at Marshfield. (Loud 
applause.) Blessed be his men:ioi-v ! Long will it live in the afi"cctions of the 
American people ! (Renewed applause.) 

Here are the two instances, then, in which the North has rebuked disunion 
at home and abroad ; and the good sense of the country has kept it down, has 
crushed it, for more than forty years. I remember, thirty years ago, having 
some connection with a newspaper, writing an article which I have yet, and 
which I have examined within a few days, rebuking the Executive of the State 
of Georgia, who threatened disunion, in one of his messages, because the gov- 
ernment did not remove the Indians from the State. And so it has been at the 
South, whenever anything was a real or supposed cause of dissatisfaction : dis- 
union was the remedy. But there is no disunion at the North. There is a set- 
tled purpose to have liberty in the Union and in the Territories, but no disunion 
anvwhere. We desire to observe, we are determined to observe as a party, as 
sovereign States in the North, every portion of the social compact contained in 
the Constitution of the United States ; and what is more, Sir, we are determ- 
ined to compel their oi>servance by others. It is obligatory upon them as well 
as upon ourselves ; and we are met here to-night for the purpose of rebuking 
disunion and everything which tends to disunion, whether it be here or whether 
it be elsewhere : and while we are determined to observe and to have others 
observe, all the compromises of the Constitution, we do not desire, in the slight- 
est degree to interfere Avith any of the domestic institutions of the South. As 
the distinguished gentleman who has preceded me has said, with the internal 
condition of the States, v/holher it be in respect of slaves or in respect of any- 



21 

tbing else, we disavow the right to interfere. We disavow any autliority on 
the part of anybody but the people of the States themselves, to interfere ; and 
what is more, Sir, we will aid — if there be domestic insurrection, or if there be 
violence from abroad, from whatever quarter it may come — we will aid, with all 
the powers of the Constitution, and with all the appliances of the State govern- 
ment, in putting down everything which may disturb the tranquillity of any 
State or any territory. (Applause.) Yes, Sir, we go further than this. We 
■will observe, with a fidelity which knows no abatement or reserve — we will ob- 
serve, as citizens and as politicians, not only the statutes of Congress, which may 
be properly passed upon subjects over which they have proper jurisdiction ; but 
we will observe also, the decisions of the Supreme Court, where they are delib- 
erately pronounced upon matters in judgment and necessary to the decision of 
the particular question pending, in regard to which that tribunal has exclusive 
authority. (Applause.) We will observe them with the same fidelity that we 
would obey our own statutes or the decisions of the highest tribunal in our 
own State. But, Sir, we require that those decisions should be properly pro- 
nounced, upon matters necessarily in judgment, and that there should not be any 
extra-judicial opinions — whether designed or not, we care not — any extrajudi- 
cial opinions, got up for political purposes to aid a political party, and attempted 
to be forced upon us contrary to the well-settled rule which prevails in cas-es of 
that description. In other words, we respect and obey the tribunal in the 
exercise of all its legitimate functions, as we do in resj^ect of our own 
judicial tribunals ; if it goes beyond that, we do what the State of Georgia did ; 
we do what General Jackson did ; we do what other States at the ^outh have 
done, — in declaring that when that tribunal steps beyond its proper boundaries 
under the Constitution, its decisions are not binding upon us, and we will seek 
their reversal and overthrow. I wish to be understood, however, that this is to 
be done in a lawful, peaceable, constitutional way — not by disregarding even an 
extra-judicial decision, but by presenting the question again to the Court, as we 
have a right to present it, and as I hope a distinguished gentleman who has just 
addressed you [Mr. Evarts] will hereafter be able to present one case which has 
greatly agitated the country ; so that the Court, upon a deliberate review of its 
judgment, will pronounce it to be erroneous, and declare, that the Constitution of 
the United States is a constitution for liberty, and not a constitution for the 
propagation, extension, and perpetuation of slavery, ((^reat cheering.) In 
other words, what the Republican party proposes to do is to be done lawfully, 
under the Constitution ; by force of persuasion and argument, by the operation 
of deliberate conviction peaceably produced, and not by violence or outrage, or 
by a wanton disregard of the decisions of the Court. Further, we do not pro- 
pose, in the event of the election of a President who does not suit us, whose 
political opinions do not agree with our own, to dissolve the Union. We leave 
that matter entirely for our Southern brethren. (Laughter.) 

We believe, and act upon the belief, that any man elected according to 
the provisions of the Constitution — fairly elected — without fraud, without vio- 
lence, is entitled to be President of the United States for his whole term. (Ap- 
plause.) 

We do not agree with the doctrine of Gov. Wise, or the doctrine imputed 
to him, that if a President is elected whom the South does not admire, they will 
march to Washington and prevent his inauguration. I should like to see that 
operation tried with a Northern President. (Voices — So would I.) I should 
like to see it tried ; and I hope the Republican party will put these proud 
boasters in a way to try it. (Cheers.) I think that the patriotic hordes of the 



22 

North would march to Washington, and that those who came there to effect 
so ignoble and so treasonable an object, would show less courage even than was 
exhibited during the war of 1812, at Bladensburg. 

Now, while we observe all these guarantees, while we mean to follow all 
the compromises of the Constitution, implicitly ; the people at the South must 
understand, that we will do so in the full exercise of our own opinions upon all 
subjects having a connection with civil liberty and with the ultimate progress 
of this country, in social advancement and in Christian civilization. (Voices — 
" Good," and applause.) 

We allow them to entertain just such opinions as they please, to express 
them here if they please, upon all these subjects ; to keep their domestic institu- 
tions to themselves, so that they may not interfere with us and with our rights of 
conscience ; but, at the same time, we claim for ourselves — and we will have 
for ourselves — the right of private judgment ; and we will exercise our conscien- 
tious convictions upon any and every subject within the scope of our civil insti- 
tutions, as understood by the Fathers of the Republic. (Cheers.) 

We maintain that there shall be no fettering of our consciences : no pad- 
locking of our lips, will be tolerated. ("No, no," and bravo.) We will not, of 
course, speak our sentiments so as to create or incite domestic insurrection ; but 
here, at the North, we will speak, we will write, we will think as we choose upon 
all these subjects. (Prolonged applause.) And if it be expected that the 
Union is to be preserved at the sacrifice of any of these rights, the sooner our 
Southern brethren undeceive themselves the better. 

I do not apprehend any diflSculty upon that subject. (Voices — Nor I 
eitber.) 1 do nut apprehend that in the event of the election of a Republican 
President there will be any difficulty. It will be marvelous how pleasantly 
things will settle down when that is accomplished. (Voices — That's so.) It 
has always b*^en so. And so far as I am concerned ; so far as the Republi- 
can party is concerned, in my judgment, if we should be defeated in the next 
canvass — if they should elect Stephen A. Douglas, or Jefferson Davis, or Gov. 
Wise, or even Judas Iscariot or Barrabas — we will sustain the Union ; and we 
will try ao-aiu the next time, and we will enthrone a Republican President in 
the Gapitol as sure as time progresses. (Protracted and loud cheers.) More- 
over, if it be expected that we are to adopt the doctrine recently promulgated 
in high quarters, that slavery is the normal condition of the black race, that it 
is a Divine Institution, that it has the power and right of missionary benevol- 
ence to sustain it ; if we are to sustain that doctrine ; if that is to be forced 
upon us as American citizens, we shall see what will be the sad result. It is 
lamentable that after one encroachment upon another has been made upon the 
principles of freedom, that this new dogma is also added to the list of enormi- 
ties. It is substantially proclaimed by the highest judicial authority of the gen- 
eral government. It is proclaimed in the city of New York, and I fek indigna- 
tion and shame, that such sentiments promulgated in the city of New York, at 
a largo public meeting, held for the laudable purpose of saving a Union which 
■was in no danger, should not have been instantly met with universal disappro- 
bation. (Applause.) Why, Sir, it is going back three centuries in the race of 
civilization. (Renewed applause.) It is returning to the dark ages, and to the 
darkest period of the dark ages. (Voices — That's so.) It is an insult to an intelli- 
gent, civilized, and Christian community, to ask them to believe it, and to sanction 
such a doctrine in order to appease their Southern brethren and induce a greater 
love for their domestic institutions. Let them keep these institutions if they 
■will, but never at the expense of our consciences. Let us entertain our own 



23 

opinions ; let us express them on all proper occasions ; for we cannot, we never 
will, surrender our right to advance our own sentiments — sentiments character- 
istic of the civilization of the age in Avhich wc live and alike creditable to our 
humanity and our manhood. 

Now, I maintain, Sir, that it was the design and understanding of the 
framers of the Constitution, that slavery should cease by the gradual operation 
of laws to be passed by the several States in which it existed at the time of its 
formation. That sentiment is found in the speeches, in the public newspapers, 
in every source of information to which we can resort for the opinions which 
prevailed at that day. It is found, indeed, in the Constitution itself, because, 
after twenty years, the importation of slaves was expressly.forbidden, in order to 
prevent their increase. We at the Norih have observed that imidied stipula- 
tion. We hav^e observed it because slavery was wrong in itself, injurious to the 
best interests of the country, destructive of the progress of freedom, and a viola- 
tion of the spirit of the instrument ; and especially of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, out of which that instrument grew ; and it has not been till lately that the 
Southern people have maintained a contrary doctrine, and insisted that slavery 
not only existed in the States under the Constitution, but was carried by it into 
the Territories. Now, is it carried into the Territories by the Constitution of the 
United States ? I maintain that it is not ; and while I shall not go into the 
legal argument upon that subject, I will state some views that seem to me to 
have an important bearing upon it. It is said to have been decided iu 
the Dred Scott case, that slavery does exist in the Territories in viitue of the 
Constitution of the United States ; but, as I have already intimated, that was 
not a binding judgment; the point not being necessarily before the court. It 
was so declared at the time by several of the judges. I believe the court will 
review that obiter dictum, and come to a different conclusion. That decision, 
however, goes upon the ground that the spirit of the instrument sanctions 
slavery, and that it protects slaves as property, because fugitive slaves are re- 
quired to be surrendered. It is conceded that there is no express provision upon 
the subject. It is claimed as incidentally inferable because property in slaves 
is substantially protected ; so that the remark has been well made that the only 
property protected or recognized by the Constitution of the United States, is 
property in patents and in Negroes. (Laughter.) 

It is not pretended by the advocates of the doctrine, that slavery is carried 
thereby any express provision of the Cons-titution, or that it is established there 
by the Constitution, but that it attaches as an incident to a slave taken by his 
owner (the slave being property) into a Territory ; and then the power is de- 
nied, not only to Congress but to the Legislature of the Territory to pro- 
hibit or establish slavery ; and you are aware that in the Territory of Ne- 
braska, a bill abolishing slavery has been vetoed by the Territorial Governor, 
and tliat Governor is retained in office by the President, because his veto 
re-echoes substantially the sentiments of the President. 

Suppose, then, we concede, that a slave is property, and that he is so in 
virtue of the law of the particular State in which he is held in bondage. 
There is no common law authorizing slavery. The common law of England, 
which is our common law, is against it. Cowper said, a long time ago, 

" Slaves cannot breathe in England, 

They touch our country and their shackles fall." 

It is a rule of law, also, that colonists when they go from a particular 
country into a territory of the parent State, carry with them the common law of 
the country whence they depart. There is no common law of the United 



24 

States ; no statute law of the United States regulating slavery, or any of our 
domestic institutions ; not even of the domestic relations of parent, child, 
guardian, or ward, or any thing of that kind. Wbat sort of law, then, do our 
colonists carry with them when they go from a State into a territory where 
there is no organized law ? Why, of course, they carry with them the general 
principles of ttie common law, that English law which is ia favor of freedom, 
■which does not recognize slavery ; and when they take a slave therefore as pi'op- 
erty, he is not held in slavery in the Territory under any territorial law, because 
there is none, nor under any common law, because there is none ; but as the 
court has said, he is held in virtue of the biw of the State from whence he is 
taken. But this cannot be. We all know that a law cannot operate extra-ter- 
ritorially ; so that there cannot be any legalized slavery, growing out of any 
positive institution or positive state of the law in a Territory, for there is none. 
Then it attaches to him, as the court has said, because it is incidental ; because 
beino- a slave in the State from whence he was taken, therefore he is a slave 
in the State to which he is taken, or any territory to which he is taken. Well 
now, let us try that argument in another form. I fear I am wearjdng you ; 
(loud cries of " No, no, go on ") but if you will listen to me for a few moments, 
I will end this discussion. 

Suppose we concede that this is one of the compromises of the Constitution, 
that a slave may be taken into a Territory as property. It is also one of the 
compromises of the Constitution that a man may go from a free State and hold 
■whatever property he has, and exercise whatever rights he possesses, precisely the 
same as the slave-holder may go from a slave State with his slave. The rights 
of each are equal — neither is exclusive. And is it possible that the Constitution 
of the United States protects the slave-holder alone, and does not protect the 
free Avhite man when he goes there. Why, what does the free white man carry 
with him ? lie carries with him, first, a conscience that does not tolerate 
slavery (good) — an educated conscience, that does not tolerate slavery. It is 
his property, just as much as the slave is the property of the slave-owner. It is 
more, it is a trust delegated to him by his Maker, which he is not permitted to 
abuse or pervert. And yet, if a slave-holder may go there with his property 
thus, and thus onh^, establishing slavery, and preventing the exercise of the 
rights of conscience of the free white man, who goes there ■with a freedom- 
loving conscience, where is the toleration that the Constitution of the United 
States furnishes ? Where their equality of rights under the Constitution ? 
Why, he cannot speak upon the subject of slavery; he cannot print any thing 
upon the subject of slavery; he cannot do any thing that is displeasing to the 
slave-holder, without being in danger of a summary tribunal which executes 
justice or vengeance, without trial and against law. 

Take another instance : He takes with him a printing press and printing 
materials ; he carries vrith him a firm determination to advocate civil freedom 
for all, and religious liberty ; he is forbidden by the very atmosphere which sur- 
rounds him, if slavery is tolernted there, from using that printing press, from 
publishing his sentiments, from exercising the dearest rights which, have ever 
been conferred upon human beings, and all this because the Constitution of the 
United States only permits property in slaves. And where, then, is the equality 
for ■which our Southern friends so much clamor? and where is the regard for 
the rights of Nonhern men, of Northern sentiment ? and above all, where are 
the rights of the laboring man, the poor laboring man, the foreign emigrant? 
Who doubts that but for slavery he ■would seek our wide and beautiful ter- 
ritories, populate them, and make them free, republican, freedom-loving States^ 
(Cheers.) They cannot, they will not be such, if slavery imprints its deadly 



si 

stain upon them. The home-seeking laborer is turned away from them, and they 
are given up to the dominion of the slave-owner, the slave-driver, and to the 
many evils which inevitably follow in the train of slavery. In truth, its exis- 
tence is a practical exclusion of emigrants from the free States. I deny, there- 
fore, that there is any thing in the Constitution of the United States, which pro- 
tects slavery in the Territories simply because the condition of slavery attached 
to a person in the place from whence he was taken. I say it does not, because 
maintaining that doctrine is subversive of the rights of Northern men, of free 
men, of fi'ee labor, of the proper advance of civilization, and of the spirit of 
the Constitution. (Applause.) 

How, then, are we to advance the sentiments, the principles, which we 
maintain ? It is by a firm, consistent, straightforward course, interfering in no 
respect with the rights of Southern men, and demanding that they shall not in 
the slightest degree interfere with our own, and by going forward to success if it 
may be, or to defeat if it may be, under our own chosen leaders — not any half-way 
leader, not any man of doubtful sentiments, not any man who may be against 
us the moment he is inaugurated, and of whose antecedents we have very little 
knowledge. Let us take a representative man (applause), one long identified 
with us. There are enough of them ; able, distinguished, honest men ; let us 
take one of them, and as sure as time advances, the strong spirit, the earnest 
will and the honest efforts of the republican party, will succeed. (Cheers.) It 
may not be immediately. I think it will be immediately, but it may not be. 
"We can live, and trust, and hope. I should as soon think of taking a feeble 
man, a man little known to us, for our candidate, as those who rose at the bid- 
ding of Peter the Hermit, would have thought of rescuing the tomb of Mahomet 
from the hands of the infidel, instead of the Holy Sepulchre. Let us, then, go 
forward with one of our representative men. Let us present our own chosen son 
of New York. (Protracted and boisterous cheering. The whole company rose 
and cheered lustily for several minutes.) Let us present him to the Chicago 
Convention ; let us secure his nomination if we can, and let us secure his elec- 
tion, if he be nominated. He is not. faultless ; he may have made some mis- 
takes ; but where will you find an honester record ? (Applause.) Where will 
you find a person who, in a long career in the Senate, going there under con- 
tumely and reproach, unkindly treated by his associates — where will you find 
one who has borne himself so meekly, so wisely, so discreetly, so distinguish- 
inwly ? Our preference is for him ; but we go for any other nominee, equally a 
representative man. We have our preferences, but we do not adhere to those 
preferences if the Convention, in its wisdom, should think otherwise ; but if we 
take a representative man, we shall have in the Territories, from henceforth and 
forever, free soil, free speech, a free press, free consciences, and free men. (Great 
cheering.) 

The Chairman then read the next toast : 

" The Republican Party — It believes in the faith of the fathers of the Re- 
public ; cherishes their traditions, and venerates their examples. It is devoted 
to the union of the States, and to the freedom and honor of each. God's will 
and the laws of the land are the only authorities to which it professes allegiance. 
Wherever it bears rule, it preserves order, maintains law, and secures every 
man's rights. There is not a Republican State in which any person may not 
travel in safety wherever he pleases, pursue his business without molestation, 
and write and speak on all subjects, as his conscience and self-respect may dic- 
tate. Its principles need only to be extended, to present the same spectacle 
throughout the whole land." (Applause.) 



• 26 

He called upon David Dudley Field, Esq., to respond. Mr. Field was 
loudly cheered when he vacated his seat to speak to the above sentiment. He 
said : — 

SPEECH OF DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, Esq. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

" It need not surprise us that the Republican party has encountered mis- 
representation and abuse. A new party, advancing rapidly to power, offering 
a firm resistance to the aggressive policy of the slaveholders — a policy begotten 
of the love of money and the love of rule — must expect to be vilified in pro- 
portion as it is feared. The weight of government cannot be transferred from 
one side to the other, any more than a burthen can be shifted from one shoulder 
to the other, without a temporary stagger. Power never passes from the few 
to the many, or from the many to the few, but after a struggle ; and when an 
oligarchy is giving way, it strikes with a violence short-lived, but vindictive and 
cruel. 

" It is not in any offensive sense that I term the slaveholders an oligarchy. 
I know how many estimable persons there are in the South, and I would say 
nothing against them personally ; but the slaveholders, of whom there are 
scarcely more than three hundred thousand in all, have combined to rule, and 
they have long ruled, the country; and it is. because this rule has become at 
last oppressive and intolerable that a majority of the free people of the North, 
moved by a common impulse, have united in resistance. The body thus united 
is the Republican party. 

" I have said that this party is new. It has arisen and grown to its present 
vast proportions within the last six years, but its principles are as old as the 
Constitution itself. Perhaps I cannot better use the few minutes which I can 
venture to take in response to the toast just given, than by re-stating some of 
the most prominent of those principles. 

" First, let me say what the Republican party is not. It is not an abolition 
party. There is, perhaps, some confusion of ideas, growing out of the prevalent 
use of the woi d abolitionist. If it were taken to mean only one who would desire 
to see slavery abolished all over the world by some safe process, just alike to the 
master and to the slave, there is a vast majority of men and women throughout 
Christendom, the Southern States themselves included, who would be aboli- 
tionists. That, however, is not the meaning now affixc-d to the word in this 
country. Nor does it mean a citizen of a slave State who aims at the gradual 
emancipation of the s'aves. Such a person we call an emancipationist. There 
are many such in Kentucky and Missouri, as we know, and elsewhere in the 
South, as I doubt not. But if the word abolitionist means, as I understand it, 
one, who, living in a free State, would interfere actively in the slave States to 
abolish the slavery which they tolerate, then I say the Republican party is not, 
never has been, and nevci" will be, an abolition party. It will not directly nor 
indirectly interfere with slavery in the States whose laws permit it. Our doc- 
trine is, that the States are sovei'eign and independent, except so far as they 
have ceded their rights to the Union. We believe that New York has no more 
right to unmake a slave in Virginia, than Virginia has to make a slave in New 
York. We go further : we regard all the States not only as legally competent 
to the management of their own concerns, but as morally competent; as the 
best judges of what is for their own good ; as equals in rights and in dignity ; 
as entitled to fraternal respect as truly as legal deference. By no means, there- 
fore, whether by law, by violence, or by the pressure of external public opinion, 
would we attempt to coerce them into a change of any of their institutions. 



2T 

" The Republican party is not a disunion party. It loves the Union, not 
with a cold, calculating love, but with a warm, heartfelt devotion. It loves it 
for the heroic past ; it loves it for the glowing future. The traditions of brotherly 
help and counsel, the history of sacrifices and successes, side by side, are stored 
in the memory of all Republicans. Every consideration of duty, interest, aifec- 
tion, binds us to the union of these States. Nay, we believe not only that the 
Union ought to be preserved, but that it cannot be destroyed. If, in the mad- 
ness and folly of the moment, there should be an attempt to sever the republic, 
partially successful, it could not remain disunited. The Almighty has stamped 
his law upon the hills and rivers of this continent, that they shall be governed 
by one race, and under one rule. The valley of the Mississippi can no more 
be parted, than the great river itself can be cut in two, and half of it rolled 
bickward. They who own the upper waters will own the lower also, let poli- 
ticians, disunionists, conventions. States even, say what they will. 

The Republican is not a sectional party. What is meant by sectionalism ? 
Not surely that the majority of those who profess particular tenets, or even all 
of them, live io a particular section. That might happen, nay. must happ-n, in 
all cases where a movement is not from the start universal. The philosophy of 
Plato and the jurisprudence of Rome were never sectional, though for ages the 
one was shut in Greece and the other in Italy. The Republican party Avould 
not be sectional, though in the whole century not a single republican should live 
in a slave State. The test of sectionalism is the nature of the tenets which the 
party professes, and the conduct which it aims to pursue. There is nothing in 
our tenets or our conduct which is incompatible with Southern life and Southern 
institutions. There are Republicans good and true in Kentucky and in Missouri ; 
there might be the same in Virginia or in Georgia. 

Having thus stated what the Republican party is not, let me state what it is, 
what it professes, and what it aims to accomplish. Its most distinctive principle 
lies in its opposition to the extension of slavery. With existing institutions it does 
not intermeddle; but, believing slavery to be a moral, social, and political evil, 
it will legislate, when it legislates at all on the subject, in favor of the good and 
against the evil. Upon this principle it will preserve and enforce the laws against 
the slave trade ; it will punish the slave-trader as a pirate, and keep a federal 
squadron on the coast of Africa to intercept and suppress theinfemous and cruel 
tiafKc in human beings. Upon the same principle it will protect the Territories 
from the spread of slavery. ^Vlletller it shall do this by prohibiting slavery by 
act of Congress, or by giving full effect to Territorial laws of exclusion, the mo- 
tive and the end are the same. We believe that Congress has the power of 
legislation over the Territories, and may exclude slavery. Whether it shall do 
so actively, or leave the subject to the Territorial Legislatures, one thing is cer- 
tain — Republicans Avill never consent to an act of Congress extending slavery to 
the Territories, or protecting it there. If slavery ever again enters a Territory 
of this Union, it must enter it after the Territorial Legislature has assembled 
and passed a law in its favor; which event, I take it, is not likely to happen, if 
the law of freedom, which is the primal law of the land, be enforced until the 
Legislature shall act. It is plainly the unalterable determination of the Repub- 
lican party, that Congress shall never again pass a law in favor of slavery, under 
any circumstances whatever. So far as human servitude is to be protected and 
encouraged, the States must do it for themselves, and within their own borders, 
where they shall be left undisturbed either by the federal arm, or by their sister 
States. 

A second principle of the Republican party aims at the maintenance intact of 



28 

all the riglits of the States. The Union defends the States, the States defend the 
citizens. Such is the general theory of our institutions. The freedom of the 
citizen is mainly dependent upon the spirit, dignity, and authority of the States. 
To these we are unalterably devoted. We of Xew York, for example, mean 
never to allow slavery to come into this free State, no matter how many laws 
Congress or the other States may pass. If a slave escapes hither he may be 
reclaimed. Such is the compact formed by our fathers, and we will abide by 
it; but beyond that we will not go; and whenever a master brings a slave 
here, the moment he touches our soil he shall be free. Our opponents maintain 
the contrary, if we may judge them by the late attempt of the State of Virginia 
to procure a decision from the courts, that a Virginian may bring his slaves 
into our State and hold them here. We think that New York and Virginia 
both may declare what persons, not citizens of the United States, may enter 
their possessions. We hold, also, that Congress cannot pass a law to punish a 
citizen of New York for any writing or speech uttered here. So long as this 
sovereign State gives us leave, we shall write and speak without the favor of 
Congress. Our opponents appear to think ditferently, as we gather from the 
late debate in the Senate of the United States upon Mr. Douglas's proposition. 

A third principle of the Republican party is, devotion to the law and legal 
methods of redress, in opposition to disorder and violence. It holds with inflex- 
ible tenacity to the doctrine that for all legal wrong, the law furnishes the only 
legal remedy; that disorder and violence are not more the symptoms of decay, 
than presages of Revolution. There are other principles of great importance, 
though of less magnitude than those I have mentioned ; but I have not time to 
pursue them further. 

1 hese principles, as I have said, are as old as the Constitution itself, though 
the party which professes them is new. They have been taught us from the 
cradle, we have read them in every volume of our history, and when the occa- 
sion came for vindicating them by acts, a whole people sprang to their feet, and 
the great party of which we are speaking, took possession of almost all the 
North. No wonder that a movement so spontaneous and general should have 
been made. The greatest name known to us, and perhaps to the world, is that 
of Washington ; and next to him in popular regard is Jefferson. The Republi- 
can creed can be extracted from the writings of Washington and Jetferson 
alone. We are aiming at nothing new — we are seeking only to preserve, main- 
tain, and defend the old. Ours is the true conservative party. We stand upon 
the principles, we pursue the policy, of our fathers. Th<ir principles were tried 
in the fires of the Revolution; their policy was the development of their belief 
and their experience. Under the first Presidenis, in the first Congresses, when 
the immortal men who had led the nation in war, and framed its constitution in 
peace, were living and acting, devising the laws and determining the course of 
the re])ublic, then were laid down the maxims of government which the republi- 
cans to-day profess as the creed of their party. By them we are ready to 
stand — I was about to say, stand or fall ; but we cannot fall. For, in the lan- 
guage of that simple and sublime hymn which the faith of the early ages has 
handed down to us through the Catholic church, to the joy of all believers : — 

For right is right, as God is God; 
And right shall surely win. 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin. 

Mr. Field sat down amid enthusiastic cheering. 



2^. 

The President read tlie tenth regular toast — 

" The Next Presidential Election — It will show that when the constitu- 
tional majority elects a President, the nation has both the power and the will to 
enforce submission to his administration of the government." 

Wm. W. Northrop, Esq., to whom was assigned the duty of responding to 
this toast, generously withdrew to afford Mr. Smith an opportunity of proposing 
" The Clergy'^ Rev. Dr. Bellows being about to retire. 

Mr. E. Delafield Smith arose, and addressing the President, said he wished 
to interrupt the regular order of the proceedings for the purpose of proposing a 
toast which he was confident would meet with the unanimous approval of the 
assembly. He gave as a sentiment — 

" The Clergy — Eminent men among them encourage us to expect the active 
aid of the moral and the religious iu the promotion of our cause." 

He called upon the Rev. Dr. Bellows, who in obedience to the demand 
spoke substantially as follows : — 

SPEECH OF REV. HEIfRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

I should have been very much obliged, if you had denied the prayer made 
in my behalf by the courtesy of the last speaker; for certainly I came here only 
to hear and be instructed, not otherwise to participate in the exercises which we 
have so richly enjoyed. Yet, though unprepared to offer anything deserving a 
place among the deliberate and weighty speeches of this evening, I am prepared 
to eJcpi-ess the satisfaction I have had in seeing the policy of the Republican 
party expounded with such clearness, shaped with such prudence, and with so 
strict a regard to constitutional obligations and moral principles, by the learned 
and eloquent leaders to whom we have listened. (Applause.) I hold it a 
most auspicious beginning of the campaign now before us, that its first words in 
this city should have been pronounced so prudently, distinctly and harmoniously. 
(Renewed applause.) 

It has seemed to me for some time one of the greatest dangers of our North- 
ern sentiment in connection with the slavery question, that our people did not 
fully consider the limitations placed by the Constitution upon their rights and 
their obligations in reference to this subject; that they were in danger of con- 
founding what natural justice and universal principles must lead them to desire, 
with what alone they have a right to demand, or to seek to effect, under a con- 
stitution of original compromises and adjustments. It is natural. Sir, in a 
country as happy and free as ours, to forget that any difference exists between 
the actual and the ideal, or tiiat any obstacles are to hinder theoretical justice 
and absolute humanity from being realized in our practice. But all civil and 
social compacts involve limitations and compromises — a choice of evils, a patience 
with defects ; and it is high time that the sensitive but not always sufficiently 
enlightened conscience of our republican constituents, were relieved of a sense 
of general responsibility in respect to matters over which they can have no leo-it- 
iinate political control. My own sympathies and affections are active enough, 
I trust, to enable me to respect and admire the generous humanity which drives 
our Northern heart to desire and to aim not merely at the constitutional restric- 
tion of slavery, but also at its extinction through political agitation. (Cheers.) 



30 

But I feel, as a citizen, tliat this ardor ouglit to be self-restrained ; that this 
generous humanity must be regulated and kept -within the banks of a strict 
constitutional allowance, and not permitted an unchecked and irregular sweep 
through our domain. I confess it is a painful necessity to be called on by polit- 
ical obligations to restrain humane impulses. But I know not how, with proper 
regard to oaths and compacts, we can still claim political blessings and rights 
and permit ourselves to construe our political obligations by anything more or 
less than the fair spirit of their original meaning. (Applause.) I say this with 
a full knowledge of what is expected from a Christian minister — whose lean- 
ings should be to the largest liberty and the most humane interpretation of law. 
But when such precious things as society itself, political existence and national 
integrity, are threatened by moral and philanthropic enthusiasm, it is important 
for religious teachers to consider the respect due to positive law, and to ask 
themselves whether natural justice and the prospects of universal liberty are to 
be served by seeking them directly, and at the risk of written and legal obliga- 
tions. As the friend of the slave, as one who considers him cruelly wronged by 
the existing institutions of the slave States, I still believe that his best and speed- 
iest chance for liberty is in having the sympathy of a Northern public, which 
strictly regards every political obligation it has entered into with the South, and 
thus secures its right to exert whatever moral influence it can in the slave's favor. 
If the slave knew his interest he would implore us to be faithful to our constitu- 
tional compact. 

I know that the clergy you have just honored with a sentiment, are some- 
what open to the charge of disregarding their duties as citizens — of uttering 
intemperate and exciting sentiments, incompatible with civil and political obli- 
gations. Doubtless, they could profit by more intercourse with the legal pro- 
fession, and by a habit of considering more attentively the relations between 
right and rights — conscience and law. The country owes at this juncture vast 
obligations to the legal profession for its careful and just discriminations ; and 
when legal acuteness and sobriety are animated by patriotism and illumined by 
conscientious and religious feelings, they furnish, as we have seen to-night, safe 
and invaluable pilotage to our national vessel. (Great applause.) 

Allow me, Sir, to dwell for a moment on another point. Whatever our 
dislike of slavery may be, or our sympathy for the slave, I think duty, charity, 
and policy require us to abstain strictly from insulting and irritating observations 
towards our Southern fellow-citizens. They are, at this hour, the most unhap- 
pily circumstanced people under the sun. Living under the moral censure of 
the civilized globe, for being the heirs of an institution which has unexpectedly 
grown into almost sudden vastness — which has from political and economic 
causes insiduously interwoven itself with their social and material interests in 
an inseparable way — they have been overpowered by a temptation too sti'ong 
for human nature to resist — overtaken by an evil too mighty to be successfully 
withstood. (Applause.) Their pecuniary interests, their hereditary customs, 
their natural prejudices and affections, their local pride, their climate, and their 
peculiar industry — all commend servile labor to their support. Their position, 
as American citizens, the heirs of a revolutionary struggle for the rights of man, 
their federal connection with a reformatory and progressive sisterhood of States, 
their necessary participation in the moral and political light of the nineteenth 
century, their own secret sense of the intrinsic perils of this anomalous and 
belated element of barbaric despotism in a free political atmosphere, of the ever- 
increasing necessity of bringing to an end, what none can propose any practica- 
ble method of safely ending — all unite to make slavery a subject of alarm, 
anxiety, self-reproach, and perplexity. (Loud cheers.) 



31 

"Was ever a gi'eat and generous, and chivalrous people placed in a tnorc 
pitiable position ? — the World, Humanity, their Country, Morality, Religion, 
Personal Security, pointing them to a path which neither their economic inter- 
ests, their political pride, their hereditary customs, their internal passions and 
prejudices, their climate, nor their experience permit them to take I I do not 
suppose our Southern brethren are different from ourselves, or that we, in their 
circumstances, should have acted better than they. I believe that never in the 
history of the world, was a community of States capable of rising so far above 
the blinding power of its temporal interests, as to feel the obligation to abandon 
on moral grounds, what almost every other consideration induced them to 
cling to. The emancipation of the West Indies, done by the parent country for a 
colony, was not a parallel case. Under these circumstances, the South merits 
our sympathy, our charity, and our forbearance. Nor must her passionate un- 
reasonableness, and abuse of Northern rights and Northern chaiacter, provoke 
or excuse retaliation. Being right, we can afford to submit to temporary injustice. 
Being wrong, she cannot but be unhappy and unjust. Tlie sense of doom from 
the public opinion of the world, is upon slavery, and the South is too intelligent 
not to know it, and too sensitive not to feel all the pain of such a frown. It 
drives her to madness, perverts for the time her moral judgment*, leads her to 
say, " Evil be thou my good ;" makes her deny the wisdom and humanity of 
her own great ancestors, and to enunciate not only a slave code, but a Moral- 
ity, a Biblical Interpretation, a Literature, a Public Law, and a Philosophy of 
History, all her own. (Applause,) 

Can we not estimate, by this tremendous retrogradation, the enormous pres- 
sure of interest and feeling under which the South is living? and should it not 
soften our judgment, temper our indignation, and sweeten our tones towards 
her, to reflect that only irresistible common causes could produce so general, so 
abnormal, so extraordinary a perversion of universal morality ; and that such a 
condition of things cannot be mended by crimination, abuse, or taants. I hope 
that however the evils of slavery may be exposed in the present campaign, 
slaveholders themselves will be treated with a sympathy and tenderness which, 
though they may affect to repel and despise, they obviously need, and I sincerely 
think, really deserve. 

I will say no more (cries of " Go on," "go on "), except to add my most 
hearty assent to the opinion expressed by several gentlemen here, that duty and 
policy require the Republican party to put in the place of standard-bearer in 
the coming campaign, a thoroughly-known representative man. If " it is better 
to be right than to be President " it is better also to do justice and honor to right 
principles, than to make a President by compromising them. We are aiming 
to create a proper public sentiment, by fair political agitation and discussion, 
and action ; and to place this honest public sentiment in actual power if we can. 
But if we merely put into the Presidential chair one that has not a republican 
heart in his bosom, but only wears one on his sleeve — one that has not helped 
to make the republican sentiment of the country, and is not actually in sym- 
pathetic relations with the moral and political feelings of the party, we shall 
have achieved no real triumph ; we shall have done no work that will not 
remain to be done again, or probably undone and then done over ! Beaten 
with a candidate like Seward, we shall have made more ground, than victorious 
with an equivocal or compromise man. (Applause.) If we sacrifice to imme- 
diate success, the duty of supporting with all the force we have, our grand moral 
policy as embodied in some man whose record stands in the eyes of all the 
world for this policy, we shall lose real influence and dignity throughout the 



32 

country and the world. (Cheers.) Let us show that we are not aiming at pat- 
ronage and spoils, nor at mere party and sectional triumphs, but that we are 
conscientiously and religiously resolved to support, under the Constitution, that 
political policy which represents undying oppositioji to the least extension of 
slavery. (Cheers.) That is the thing for which we contend, and he who best 
represents that opposition — represents it in the most constitutional, temperate, 
and able manner, — not only best deserves our support — but can best secure it, 
and if beaten, will leave us stronger in the country, than though we possessed 
the government with a political Hybrid, his chief merits being no record in the 
Presidential chair. 

With a standard-bearer that truly stands for us, we shall have, I doubt not, 
the party, the world, and Divine Providence, on our side. (Great applause.) 

The eleventh regular toast — 

" Our own noble City, — She will not always be the spoil of the Sham 
Democracy." 

was responded to by James M. Cross, Esq., Ex-member of the Board of 
Councilmen. 

SPEECH OF JAS. M. CROSS, ESQ. 
Mr. Chairman : — 

It is to be regretted that the gentleman who was expected to respond to 
this sentiment, has been called away. He could have done the subject better 
justice, and would have entertained you better than I can. He is fresh from our 
municipal council, where he was permitted to sit out his term in peace. He 
was complimented with a renomination, in which also he has the advantage of 
me; therefore, under the circumstances, his absence is peculiarly unfortunate. 

To speak of what constitutes the greatness of New York, is like repealing a 
thrice-told tale. Who is not familiar with it as with household words? "What can 
be said of her that you do not alrea'iy know ? In an enlightened age like this, 
with a free press, with avenues to knowledge broad and numerous, it would be 
presumption in me to attempt to enlighten an audience like this, upon the past 
history or present greatness of this heart of the western hemisphere. The 
ubiquity of her commerce, her commodious harbor, her commanding geograph- 
ical position, her palatial buildings, her public charities, her common schools, 
her private hospitals and asylums, her public Avorks, of which the Central Park 
will be the crow^ning glory, — these are known to you all ; as well as that other 
evidence of importance so peculiar to New York — I mean high taxation. 
(Laughter and applause.) Other evidences of distinction are abundant, of 
which it would not become us to boast. Take for example our municipal gov- 
ernment. Where is there a city that can come within gun-shot of us? (Laugh- 
ter.) I am aware that mankind do not like to be told of their faults ; but I 
insist that a real friend will not withhold the truth. Doubtless, you have all 
heard of the traveler who preferred being put into a room with a pickpocket 
than with a New-York alderman. (Renewed merriment.) Gentlemen may 
draw their own conclusions. I am decidedly of the opinion the traveler did 
not entertain a very exalted opinion of New-York officials. Let Sham Democ- 
racy boast of their great and reliable majorities in this city. It is my solemn 
conviction, if it has nothing better to commend itself, than the city government, 
and the status of the men it sends to the Legislature and to Congress, the 



83 

sooner their majority is wiped out, the better it will be for the city and the 
country. (Loud cheers.) 

One of the greatest elements of the city's wealth and prosperity is the 
intellio-ence and enterprise of her merchants. Admiring that element as I do, 
I am mortified at the course some of them have recently adopted in respect to 
the Southern trade. I would ask those merchants, why not extend the princi- 
ple, and they themselves apply the test, to commission merchants, and to manu- 
facturers of New and Old England, and of France and Germany, and refuse to 
buy from those who are not "sound on the goose" ? (Laughter.) If Boston and 
Philadelphia had disgraced themselves as New York has done, there would be 
some comfort in the thought; as it is, we are alone in our humiliation, and it 
will be a long day before the stigma will be wiped out. Mr. Chairman, we 
have had in this and other cities, what were called Union-saving demonstra- 
tions. Now, Sir, if those proceedings could be paraphrased, they would read 
tlius — "Pray, Messrs. Fire-eaters, be so kind as not to break up this happy, 
money-making Union, in the event of the election of a Republican President. 
We will use our best endeavors to convince our neighbors that human slavery 
is benignant; that it is a benign institution, and should be extended, and that 
labor is degrading to the white man. All this we promise faithfully to perform, 
and we humbly beg you not to withdraw your trade from us, and that you will 
permit our !?enators and Representatives to go to and fro at the seat of gov- 
ernment unmolested, and that you will not pull down the Pillars of the Capitol." 
(Great laughter ) 

Sir, the best Union-saving process that can be devised is, to thrust from 
power the present corrupt Sham Democracy, and elect Republicans. (Loud 
cheers.) 

If there are any who fear that the success of the Republican party next 
fall will endanger the Union, I say to them that all that the friends of the 
Union need fear is, corruption in high places. Pay no attention to the threats 
of pro-slavery men. The election of one bad man to a high office of trust and 
power, endangers the Union more than the threats of all the fire-eaters in the 
land. I conclude by olFering this sentiment : — 

Quadrennial Dissolutions of the Union — A disease engendered by Presi- 
dent-making. It is indigenous to the South, where it affects the head. In the 
North, its symptoms are a weakness in the knees, supposed to be induced by 
fear of the loss of trade or " Government Pap." It is not considered dangerous ; 
neveriheless, Republican doctors are preparing a remedy to exterminate it. 

The twelfth regular toast, — 

*' The Press and the Ballot — The two weapons of the Republicans, with 
which they will overcome fraud, menace, and violence," 

Was responded to by Robert A. West, Esq., of the Commercial Advertiser, 

SPEECH OF ROBERT A. WEST, Esq. 
Mr, President and JFellow Republicans : 

I think if the proposer of the tenth toast was excused from speaking, most 
assuredly the pi"oposer of the twelfth ought to be allowed to keep .silence. I 
like this toast most truly, Sir ; but while one of old said, " What shall that 
man say who cometh after the king ?" I may ask. What shall that man say 
who nc^ only cometh after the king (meaning your iionorable self, Sir), but after 
the princes of the Republican family also ? We have had here to-night. Sir, true 
3 



34 

representative rat-n of tlie party with whom we are associated; and they have 
traveled over all the ground that any speaker can be expected to occupy this 
evening. They have told us what we are and what we are not ; they have told 
us what we shall do and what we shall not do ; but just at the very point when 
the great act of our lives is to be performed, your speaker to your tenth toast, I 
know not who he is, shuts himself up in silence, and what we are to do for the 
presidential election is left for the press and the ballot to say, (Good, and applause.) 
Well, Sir, I almost think that the press and the ballot will say it ; and nobody can 
hinder the press and the ballot from saying whatever they like to say. It is my 
tirm conviction, Sir, that the Republican press and the Republican voters can do 
just about what they like, if they are sincere and honorable and earnest in their 
purposes. So far as the Press is concerned, it becomes me to say little. Al- 
though not a very old man, still I am the representative of a paper which is 
older than anybody here, I believe ; but the ballot-box is older than the Press. 
I thank God, Sir, that in this day we have the Press and the ballot, and that by 
the Press and the ballot Ave can and we will defeat all attempts to intimidate 
the Republican party, and to stitle freedom of thought and freedom of sj^eech, 
by violence or by anything else. (Applause.) Sir, as long as the men who con- 
duct the Press and the men who have a conscience and a voice — so long as the 
free men of the Nortli — are what they are, no power, no violence, no oppression, 
nothing at all, can hinder them from saying, " We are freemen, and we will have 
a free government." (Cheers.) Sir, you cannot give us an oppressive govern- 
ment, you cannot maint:dn a government that shall favor oppression, so long 
as we have an independent press and a ballot-box. The ballot-box may be 
made of glass or anything else ; but while the voice of the people is heard, free- 
dom shall reign, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of labor, 
everywhere. (Applause.) Sir, I will not trespass longer upon the company this 
evening. I did liope when I heard so much eloquence and truth, so many 
expositions of the true principles of the Republican party, that surely I might 
say nothing, enjoy my dinner, and go home to my family; but when that 
toast came to me, I felt as though my heart swelled, and when I heard Dr. Bel- 
lows pray this evening that the spirit of Washington might be infused into our 
spirits, I felt to say " Amen" to his prayer. God grant that as long as we live 
tiie spirit of Washington may entirely suffuse and impregnate our whole life 
and action, and make us men loving freedom, loving free thought and 
loving free utterance, wherever we are ! (Applause.) And, Sir, this shall be 
so, as our estt^emed friend, Mr. Field, and the other speakers have shown to us. 
In days gone by there was no idea of stopping freedom of speech, or the free- 
dom of the press and of the ballot-box ; and in reference to these past days, I 
say, with my whole heart and soul, 

" Long be our fathers' temple ours ! 

"Woe to the haud by which it falls ! 
A thousand spirits guard its towers, 

And crowds of freemen watch its walls. 

" Long be their shield by us possessed ! 

Lord, rear around our blest abode 
The buttress of a freeman's breast, 

The rampart of a present God ! " 

The thirteenth regular toast was then read — 

" Agriculture^ Commerre^ Manufactures, and the Mechanic Arts — The pil- 
lars of all our real independence ; the great sources of our national prosperity. 
May our Federal Government be ever watchful of the best interests of each !" 



35 

Elliott F. Shepard, Esq., rospondcd. On risino-, Mr. Shepard was received 
with three hearty cheers, after which he spoke as follows : 

SPEECH OF ELLIOTT F. SHEPARD, Esq. 

Mr. President and Fellow RepiibUmns : 

I have been entertained this evening in listening to the presentation of the 
political aspects of the question of the ascendancy of the Republican pariy; and 
I esteem it no small honor to have been assigned the social aspects of the tri- 
umph of this great party. (Applause.) 

We are sprung from the sod, we '' go down to the sea in ships," we make 
ourselves, we thrive by the arts. And this is true of nations as well as of in- 
dividuals. Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, and the Mechanic Arts pre- 
suppose intelligence, they are themselves educators ; and with this implication in 
it, I can conceive of no more appropriate sentiment for a patriotic occasion than 
the one you have proposed. 

Agriculture is production ; Commerce, adventure ; Mechanic Arts, ingen- 
uity ; and Manufactures, one of the results of that ingenuity. With an ingenuity 
that is proud of being useful, and with a spirit of adventure that produces per- 
manent progress, a nation must be strong and happy at home, and respected 
and imitated abroad. 

You have given me. Sir, the edifice of our Independence, built upon four 
pillars. 

If it were not heaven-constructed, it might seem to have a slender support ; 
but the whole race of man is sprung from one father, and/o?«- pillars are enough 
for our edifice. Sir Christopher Wren showed how the vast building, contain- 
ing ten thousands of people, which Satnson pulled down at his death, was sup- 
ported bv only two pillars. The only Samsons which can destroy our temple 
of liberty will" be that one of Sloth undermining the pillars of Manufactures and 
Mechanics, and that one of War bending between the pillars of Agriculture and 
Commerce. 

When Sloth and War shall become our national characteristics, then, and 
not till then, need we fear the falling of our Independence. (Applause.) 

You have given me our national prosperity as flowing fi-om four sources. 
Yes, Agriculture is the Gihon ; Commerce, ihe Pison ; Manufactures, the Hid- 
dekel ; and Mechanic Arts, the Euphrates— the four rivers of Paradise flowing 
from the four cardinal points of the compass; and our national prosperity is the 
Eden that they water. 

Of these four occupations that have in all ages divided the attention of 
mankind, — sometimes each ruling a nation to the exclusion of the others ; but all 
of them happily blended in our own, — we may designate as the type of the 
first, the patriotic Cincinnatus ; as the type of the second, the god-like Colum- 
bus ; as the type of the third, the brilliant Arkwright ; as the type of the last, the 
living Morse. 

The Roman Cincinnatus is reproduced in our own Washington (applause), 
whose acres of Mount Vernon are as celebrated as the Palace of St. Jarae^. and 
who united all these four elements of prosperity in himself, in addition to his 
other wonderful endowments. 

George Washington, Sir, raised wheat (laughter) — he was an agriculturist; 
he had a mill — he understood the mechanic arts ; he made flour — he was a 
manufacturer ; he shipped his barrels to the West Indies — he was a commer- 
cial man. And, Sir, it is said, that flour branded " George Washington," sold in 
the West Indies without the universal custom of b.ing re-weighed ; so sure did 
every one who purchased it feel, that every barrel contained exactly the one 



36 

hundred and ninety-six pounds paid for. (Laiigliter and cheers.) What else 
■would we have expected of George Washington's flour ? 

From the period when the first President was a farmer, to the present time, 
the interests of our Republic in agriculture have grown with its growth in terri- 
tory and population, and may now be set down at $4,500,000,000 annually. 

Of Columbus we cannot say too much, nor think too often. There was a 
divinity in his trial trip. His little fleet, the " Pinta," the " Santa Maria," and 
the " Nina," were a very trinity ; and, as by a divine energy, the shores that 
they discovered now annually send forth 8,000,000 of tonnage. 

On Arkwright, the Goodyear of Cotton, we seem to pronounce a eulogy 
as we speak his name. He was a wright of the most subtle and yet practical 
kind, and he has put the immense interests of manufactures into an ark where 
they shall be forever saved to the world. This interest in our cheiished Re- 
public is annually 81,300,000,000. 

Of Morse it is, and it is not, too soon to speak. His fame is already an 
immortal one, whilst we still may hail him as a cotemporary, and a fellow-citi- 
zen of the very city and the very ward we live in. AVhen thought shall cease 
to be envious of a physical compeer in electricity, when intercourse between 
man and man shall die, and when lightning shall cease to be terrible, and its 
uses wonderful, then shall Morse be consigned to oblivion. The interest of the 
Republic in the Mechanic Arts can but poorly be stated in figures, for they are 
commensurate with the worth of genius, and the power of invention and dis- 
covery. 

Almost within the reach of my voice, there lives another of our distin- 
guished fellow-citizens, who, with princely liberality unexampled in the new 
world, and a philanthropy boundless as human nature itself, has erected and 
founded an institution " To Union and Art," where these four departments of 
knowledge are to be inculcated gratuitously for Ihe benefit of that very national 
prosperity which you have said was based upon them. And their mention 
inseparably connects itself with his name. Where they hereafter shall go, the 
honor of Cooper shall be. The poor and aspiring, the learned and inquiring, 
shall too-ether have their Saint Peter. And the name of his institution shall be 
consecrated by all the legends of patriotism, and " Union " be a synonym of In- 
dependence. (Loud applause.) We have shown that the pillars on Avhich it is 
founded, are immense ; they must endure. 

You have given me the prayer that our Federal Government should ever 
be watchful of the be-t interests of each of these four original forces or principles 
of a commonwealth. 

I believe the Federal Government will be mindful of their best interests, 
when that government becomes Republican. (Applause.) 

In proof of this, I can bring the tact that the great principle of giving land 
to the landless (cheers), a farm to every creature who bears the image of the 
Great Father, whose offspring we all are, for the purpose of stimulating the pro- 
ductions of agriculture, and raising the individual to the same independence per- 
sonally that our nation enjoys collectively, is a Republican measure, first an- 
nounced and advocated by Republicans, and based upon Republican principles. 
I can bring the fact that our own glorious State, the first in commerce of all 
this Union, is a Republican State, 

I can bring the fact that the spot of our Union which is the home of our 
Manufactures, is Republican New-England ; Republican, and, therefore. New 
England. 

I can bring the fact that the great record-house of the Mechanic Arts, the 
Patent Ofliice in the Federal city, shows that three quarters of all the iuven- 



37 

lions and discoveries and improvements of the Union, come from RepnLIican 
States. 

With these proofs in view, who doubts that the Federal Government will 
be watchful of the best interests of Agriculture, Commerce, Manufiictiires, and 
the Mechanic Arts, when the Republicans shall have a complete majoiity in 
both houses of Congress, when they shall once more wear the ermine of the 
Supreme Court, and when they shall fill the Presidential chair with their own 
favorite chief! 

Mr. Shepard sat down amid loud and long-continued applause. 
The regular toasts having bemi disposed of, the President said. There are 
several other gentlempn present whom we expect to hear from ; and he had great 
pleasure in introducing Mr. Henry Beeny, a gentleman who has rendered sig- 
nal service in his advocacy of the rights of the laboring classes; and he begged 
to associate with his name a subject to which he had long devoted special atten- 
tion — '■'Home for the Homeless ; Land for the Landless.'''' 

SPEECH OF HENRY BEENY, Esq. 
Mr. President : 

" Land for the Landless.''^ 

Tills sentiment. Sir, is the sentiment of humanity, and I love it ; it is the 
sentiment of our theory of government, and I love it for that ; and it is the sen- 
timent of the Republican party, and I love it also for that. 

Would to God it had an abler champion here to respond to it — " Land for 
the Landless !" What thoughts, what feelings, what aspirations it awakens in 
the minds of the industrious and wealth-producing millions of the country ! 
It bids the laborer cheer up and toil on, politically as well as socially — telling 
him he can vote himself an independent home on the Public Lands of his coun- 
try, and assures him of a brighter, a better, and a happier time coming, when 
the rights and happiness of the individual will not be lost sight of in the desire 
for national greatness. (Applause.) 

To the merchant, it is a guarantee of large sales on short credits, dispelling 
the fear of a commercial crisis ; for give the people land and they could and 
would consume ten times as much of the products of the manufactories of the 
world as they now do; and the money not being locked up in corner-lot specu- 
lations, there would be none or very little protested paper from the West to drag 
a long and doubtful existence through a number of years, perhaps only to be 
repudiated at last or redeemed at from 50 to 75 per cent, discount. 

To this great and glorious Republic it is the cement that is to hold the 
Union of these States together, against any treasonable attempts either of for- 
eign or domestic foe. 

"Land for the Landless!" — the watch-word that is to lead us triumphantly 
through the coming contest ; and why? Because it appeals to our humanity, 
to our patriotism, to our personal interest. It is the sentiment underlying our 
Declaration of man's rights to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness;" 
for happiness depends upon liberty, liberty upon life ; life upon sustenance, and 
sustenance is derived from the soil. It is but mockery to proclaim man's right 
to be, and deny his right to a place wherein to be ; and how many of the mil- 
lions that make up this nation are without a place, without a home ! Vastly too 
many for the security of life or property. 

But are we sincere in our battle-cry of Land for the Landless, and would 
we make our party the successful one ? Then let us give the people the assu- 
rance of our sincerity and the necessarj' information on the subject, and we place 



38 

our party beyond tlie shadow of a doubt of its success, and lay a sure foundation 
for realizing that the people are sovereigns and not subjects. 

I close with the prophetic foreshadowment of Land Reform in the future as 
seen in the poetic vision of one of its firm friends : 

" Were our national legislature constantly to provide everyman with a plat 
of land, and as constantly protect him in its enjoyment and its development, 
whilst tiie other nations of the world pnrsue their present policies of monopolies 
in government and noble blood, a spirit from the land of light would fail in au 
effort to paint the contrast in perfection in half a century. From Vermont's 
green hills to the land of flowers, from the sca-gnll's home in the Atlantic to 
where he dips his snow-white wing in the Pacific; from the rich canons of the 
Rockv Mountains, deep buried in their base, all round every way, you would 
behold the ioy-lit faces of boys and girls, of old men and women, millions of 
cottages of happy freemen, untold fields of living verdure, rivers and lakes filled 
withtteamers rich in freight, and richer still in human forms that crowd their 
decks ; trains of merchandise and travel succeeding each other till the eye is 
wearied in beholding ; villages with their church spires and academical cupolas 
dotting the landscape like clouds at sunset ; cities with their marble palaces 
lining^the shores of both oceans, and the great inland seas; harbors crowded 
with'the ships of the world, their commingling colors floating from their mast- 
heads ; above all, though unseen to mortal eye, a realm of virtuous intellect, 
loving its country and adoring its God." (Enthusiastic applause.) 

The President remarked that many of our best Republicans in the 18th 
Ward were found among our adopted citizens, especially among the Germans; 
and he would be happy to hear from Philip Frankenheimer, Esq., in their 
behalf. 

SPEECH OF PHILIP FRANKENHEIMER, Esq. 
Air. President : — 

Surrounded as I am by a galaxy of orators, I acknowledge that I am flat- 
tered in being called upon to respond to this toast — " Our Adopted Citizens." 

I am pr.)ud to know that I am an American citizen — a citizen by adoption 
of this our beloved country, whose Father's birthday we this day celebrate. — 
Sir, before I proceed any farther, excuse me if I stop to cast a lingering look to 
the land that <2;ave me birth, once "mine Fatherland," where I spent my child- 
ish days; where I received my primary educaiion, where father, mother, and 
kindred dwelt, where all and everything to a childish fancy seemed perfection, 
where merely spelling books and common readers were taught, and sacred obe- 
dience to kings and potentates, strongly inculcated, as if by right of God, and 
blindly obeyed. 

Sir ! nature demands her debt ; from a child I came to be a youth, began to 
read and understand books, pamphlets, and periodicals of a maturer kind than 
those stamped and privileged by despots. Ideas expanded, senses worked their 
functions ; and the desire ripened to better ray condition, to pursue happiness, to 
flee oppression, to throw off the moral shackles that fettered me, and to set at 
defiance the will of that king, who in our childhood was instrumental to poison 
our mind with the belief that he was born to govern, to act, to think for us, " by 
the grace of God." 

The resolution to emigrate was formed ; the eve of my departure drew 
near; and with my father's blessing, I left clandestinely that home no longer 
mine nor desired as such. Emotions of anguish force themselves on my mind, 



39 

when I call back that moment when my fallier and kindred bade me farewell. 
What gloom and anxiety was depicted on their countenances, not for my leav- 
ing, but for the fear that I might be chased, hunted, and brought back, and made 
to serve the King of Bavaria. 

But Sir, there is a King, a God of a higher grace, who willed that I should 
go unmolested. He guided my bark as if carried by the wings of angels, and 
my good Mayflower landed on these shores a pilgrim, as good a Republican aa 
ever breathed the breath of life. (Cheers.) 

Although but a child, I began to realize my youthful dreams. I had life, I 
had liberty, was surrounded by unknown fellow-Republicans, and by their exam- 
ple was shown how to pursue hajipincss. 

Fate ordained that I should be reared and brought up in the State of Ala- 
bama. It was there. Sir, where I abjured my allegiance to Ludwig, the King of 
Bavaria, and swore to support the Constitution of the United Stiitos, and was 
thus made an American citizen. (Cheers.) Surely no Roman of old was 
prouder to say that he was a Roman citizen, than I was when I knew that I be- 
came an American. (Applause.) Sir, we think it unfair in the leaders of the 
American party to read us out of it, and to endeavor to depiive us of this our 
sacred second birthright. 

Sir, I am well convinced th;it I express the sentiment of every one of our 
adopted fellow-citizens, that we all cherish the strongest attachment to this our 
beloved country. 

Should there be but a single one in this land who has been made a citizen 
according to the Constitution of these United States, and yet finds room for a 
single spark of allegiance to any Power in Europe, then he has perjured himself, 
and is guilty of constructive treason. 

Sir, good, true, and sincere Americans as we are, we are forbidden to visit 
our parents, our kindred, and are forsaken the right to pay a tribute to the 
tombs of our fathers : tyrants and despots would seize us, press ns into their armies, 
and would make us suffer. Tliis should not be the case ; and avc ti'ust the day is 
not far hence, when our government will legislate for the protection of every 
American in every coiner of the world. And we might, with propriet}^, extend 
our sympathy to other civilized nations struggling for liberty ; and to the East we 
may say, " Be of good cheer," we send moral aid from this our western hemi- 
sphere. 

The President said : — "We have with us another representative of the 
Fatherland, wLom we should be glad to hear from, a gentleman connected 
with the cause of education. All must admit that common schools, whether 
in the Old World or the New, are the best nurseries of virtue, liberty, and 
independence ; and I beg to associate with them the name of Prof. Theodore 
G. Glaubensklee. 

SPEECH OF PROF. GLAUBENSKLEE. 

Prof. Glaubensklee, in obedience to the call of the President, said, that 
the honor conferred upon him was as undeserved as it was unexpected. He 
owed the compliment, in the first place, to having been born a German. There 
was not a man within the room who did not boast of descending from that 
great family of nations that we were accustomed to call the Germanic nations. 
There was not one among them that was not proud of thinking that he was 
the representative of that family of nations which had conferred the blessings 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



40 



of civilization xipon this beautiful globe. Ab I li i f i ® 

•were tired of what they had risen to thus far ; 011 898 S'^B (^ ^ 

light to break upon them. That light Avas ;„,, "-.— -- - ^-- i» 

which introduced Christianity into Germany ; and he argued that Christianity and 
civilization were synonymous terms. He thought that those who had the 
honor of being descended from that race would never forget their great call- 
ing ; they would never forget that the great object for which they were sent 
into the world was to proclaim and defend liberty from the North to the South, 
from the East to the West. (Cheers.) Although it might appear differently, 
he claimed that they had done so. He reminded them of the fact that Charle- 
magne was a German ; and also that the Pope said of the greatest of German 
Emperors, Frederick the Second of the House of Hohenstaufen, that the only 
fault he had was that he was boro three or four centuries ahead of his time. 
He reminded them of the fact that one Martin Luther was a man who reformed 
some things. (Applause.) He might also mention Emanuel Kant, wdio re- 
formed Philosophy ; Schiller, and a number of others ; and if he appealed to 
their per.*onal feelings, he would name Steuben and De Kalb, both of whom 
gave up high and exalted positions in coming to this country to show their de- 
votion to the cause of liberty. He (the speaker) did not think that one fact 
escaped the attention of his hearers — namely, the interest which the Germans 
took in the cause of education. Every human being was composed of beast 
and God ; the beast element was the body, the God element was the mind. 
The speaker maintained that the divine part had never been cultivated as much 
as it was among the Germanic races. That had been proven from olden times 
to the present, with the exception of the last fifteen years, for since that time 
the United States confessedly took the lead in the cause of education ; but, at 
the present day, there was not a country in Europe that gave the masses a more 
thorough scientific education than did Germany. He congratulated them upon 
the fact that the State of New York had taken the precedence in educational 
matters. In conclusion, the Professor alluded to the fact, that the Free Acad- 
emy, an institution in which the citizens of New York had represented their 
intention to give their children a finished education, was in the Eighteenth 
ward. He was proud of being a laborer in that institution of learning, and 
assured his heaiers that there were very few in the Free Academy who did not 
believe in the great principle of human liberty. The Professor sat down amid 
loud applause. 

The Chairman called upon Job L. Black, Esq, President of the 18th 
Ward Republican Association, wdio rose and said : — I thank you very kindly 
for making use of my name this evening. I do not mean to say any thing 
further than to propose the following toast : — 

Cassius M. Clay^ able, eloquent^ and fearless ; ever faithful to the one pur- 
pose of his life, the liberties of the people and the Union of the States. 

The sentiment w^as received with great applause. Mr. Shepard then 
proposed three cheers for Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., for the able and efficient 
manner in which he had presided over the festive board, which was responded 
to with acclamation, the company rising amid great enthusiasm, and soon after 
dispersed, delighted with the exercises of the evening. 



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